Customer Reviews

Practical Water (Wesleyan Poetry Series)

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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.

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