Customer Reviews

Loose Sugar (Wesleyan Poetry Series)

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While this may start out for many as a scholarly work, it ended up for me to be a next-to-the-bedside book, something to touch base with in the day-to-day, which is where Brenda Hillman lives much of the time. How about picking it up randomly to read: (my apologies that I cannot make these poems appear as they do on the page, which is very important to Ms. Hillman's work -- the ruidmentary text editor used for these reviews doesn't allow me to enter the proper linebreaks).

Very Busy

--- Everyone talked about how much/ busier they were. Friends/ became the type/ that could work on a poem while driving . . .//

. . . Or/ maybe you could read less. The novels/ wouldn't mind. . . .

In many of her poems, there seem to be leftover words that, while they didn't fit in the poem, couldn't be discarded and are therefore left at the bottom of the page. After, for example, Symmetry Breaking, which starts with

Poking at the airplane meal. . . .

ends up, at the bottom of the page, with:

would you like the/ Chicken Kiev or the/ Lasagna

She is so much with the world, and not of it!

This book is one that now, three years after its publication, still seems brand-spanking new, and I think it might for a very long time. I know I'm always cheered up having the book nearby.

One thing about B. Hillman--her "open" poetry doesn't seem as calculated and easy as many other poets. It seems that she arrives upon the difficulty of her poems honestly--i.e., this is the only way I can articulate this, as opposed to: I could say this much easier, but then I wouldn't be hip. "Nipples" is a great poem. I love how Hillman can raise the everyday (Lean Cuisine) to the sublime. If you're interested in the more experimental bends of contemporary poetry, this would be a good volume--a subtext is still apparent beneath the fractured surface. This is more modern than post-modern: a good thing.

Brenda Hillman is proving herself a master of that tenuous field between mainstream and Language poetry. While not her best work, Loose Sugar is a wild and consistent ride!