Practical Water (Wesleyan Poetry Series) [Hardcover]

Brenda Hillman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 3, 2009 | Series: Wesleyan Poetry Series

Practical Water is, like Brenda Hillman's previous two books, Cascadia and Pieces of Air in the Epic, both an elemental meditation and an ecopoetics; this time her subject is water: Taoist water, baptismal water, water from the muses' fountains, the practical waters of hydrology from which we draw our being--and the stilled water in a glass in a Senate chamber. Not since Allen Ginsberg tried to levitate the Pentagon has American poetry seen the likes of the hallucinatory wit and moral clarity that Hillman brings to Washington in her poems about Congressional Hearings on the Iraq War. Here also--because it is about many kinds of power--is a sequence of twinned lyrics for the moon, governess of tides and night vision, for visible and invisible faces. Violence and the common world, fact and dream, science and magic, intuition and perception are reconfigured as the poet explores matters of spirit in political life and earthly fate. If it is time to weep by the waters of Babylon, it is also time to touch water's living currents. No one is reimagining the possibilities of lyric poetry with more inventiveness; this is masterful work by one of our finest poets.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Hillman's eighth collection of poems is the third in her series of book-length meditations on the elements (her last book was Pieces of Air in the Epic). In these aesthetically challenging, yet often surprisingly clear poems, which span the personal, political and environmental, water is simultaneously a transparent vessel, a mirror and an endangered resource. The first section speaks for and through water and other masks from nature. The title poem begins by sounding the book's central question: What does it mean to live a moral life. The poem goes on to suggest how we might fruitfully learn from the titular element: It's hard to be water/ to fall from faucets with fangs/ to lie under travelers as horizons/ but you must. The second section contains a series of poems based on hearings in Congress, which Hillman actually attended, where The Congress folks are tired & beige. The two-part poems in the third section are dialogues with each month's moon (December Moon, January Moon), which speaks in cryptic hints reminiscent of Louise Glück's flowers: Don't ask/ who I am. I was/ the dawn song:/ i helped you hide. Section four looks at the waters of Hillman's native Northern California. Hillman has become an increasingly difficult poet, while simultaneously growing increasingly interested in how poetry can engage political realities. This is one of the most unusual and compelling books so far this year. (Aug.)
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Review

"If history is the public and collective, Hillman is historically engaged She is herself a 'resister.' ... Section titles---'Of International Waters,' 'Of Communal Authority,' 'Of the Months When you Work & the Months When you Can't,' and 'Of Local Creeks & Aquaducts'--identify her work as respectively internationalist, socially-committed, conscientious, and eco-poetic. She writes out of and to the society in which she's located."--Fiona Sampson, Poetry

"A collection as wise as it is finely crafted, Brenda Hillman's Practical Water is a remarkable addition to this accomplished poet's body of work."--Kristina Marie Darling, The Kenyon Review

"Hillman's Practical Water is moving and exciting."--Janet McCann, Magill's Literary Annual

"Here is a woman alive to the contradictions and obscenities of modern American power, who can notice the smallest details of life and rejoice in them, who sanctifies the waters of life even as she watches them being destroyed by the alleged progress of capital, and who thereby becomes a contemporary Allen Ginsberg and Denise Levertov, updated and refined through her own unique sensibility and sensitivity to rhythm and paradox."--Tikkun

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 120 pages
• Publisher: Wesleyan (August 3, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0819569313
• ISBN-13: 978-0819569318
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #640,006 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Crafted Leaps, Poetry of Great Permission, July 26, 2009

By 

J. K. Arnold (Portola Valley, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Practical Water (Wesleyan Poetry Series) (Hardcover)

Crafted Leaps, Poetry of Great Permission

A Review of Brenda Hillman's Practical Water
Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, CT, 2009, 103 pages

It is hard to read Brenda Hillman's poetry without one's mind turning to questions about artists and freedom. We've all heard the shibboleth 'Artists love constraint.' Poets who relish constraint can become known for expected characteristics, perhaps 'that guy who writes those luscious long lines,' or 'the woman who brings wantonness to every stanza,' or a unique use of lineage or sense of rhyme associated with his or her work.

Brenda Hillman foregrounds the other side of art, the part that says, "No, whatever box you want to put me in, I don't quite fit there." She does this with carefully crafted leaps, the association of disparate ideas in a way that keeps the reader with her, but seldom very comfortably. Once again with this, her eighth volume of poetry, she audaciously meets each poem on its own terms. If a poem's lineage should be shaped like a river, it is ("Request to the Berkeley City Council Concerning Strawberry Creek"). If it requires straightforward four sextets ("Permission to be Strange") or a two-column short-line presentation ("Phone Booth."), she lines `em up.

If a poem requires stanzas as disparate as
The man says poetry should be simple enough
for school girls to understand

But sir, school girls understand everything

Nancy Drew was in love with the obstacle, not the clue

and

Sir, when i think of poetry keeping you alive I know
you were entered by incomprehensible light
in the hour of lemon and water

then those stanzas rub shoulders in the same poem ("The Late Cold War.") . . .

Change does seem to be accelerating, even to young people; perhaps Brenda's open acceptance of change is what makes this book so appealing. Underneath the poet's nonstandard forms lies the opposite of an unquestioning belief. There are questions, and those beget more questions, and when you circle around to the initial question it has often changed. Practical Water delineates a lack of simple order both inside us and the universe. But all is not lost in this world she describes; through well-crafted leaps, the poet highlights the enormous possibility for each of us to work through to our own creative combinations.

5.0 out of 5 stars Practical Water is fascinating, January 9, 2012

By 

Valerie Smile "Valerie Reader" (Boulder, CO USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Practical Water (Wesleyan Poetry Series) (Paperback)

Practical Water is a fantastic exploration of ecopoetics, politics, and witness - including a unique sense of voice and intriguing pictures.