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Three Talks: Metaphor and Metonymy, Meaning and Mystery, Magic and Morality
Three Talks is the first prose collection by the award-winning poet and educator Brenda Hillman. These short essays on six M’s of the art of poetry make the form accessible in a novel way, exploring words that might appear incompatible but become dancing partners in Hillman’s artistic metaphor and metonymy; meaning and mystery; magic and morality.
First delivered as a series of talks at the University of Virginia, the essays maintain a casual, intimate tone. A consummate artist and technician, Hillman explores a wide array of poetic examples, focusing on method, subject matter, and inspiration to demonstrate how the skills offered by poetry have become critically important for our present moment.
First delivered as a series of talks at the University of Virginia, the essays maintain a casual, intimate tone. A consummate artist and technician, Hillman explores a wide array of poetic examples, focusing on method, subject matter, and inspiration to demonstrate how the skills offered by poetry have become critically important for our present moment.
96 pages, Hardcover
Published September 27, 2024
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About the author
Brenda Hillman
43 books57 followersBrenda Hillman (born March 27, 1951, in Tucson, Arizona) is an American poet and translator.
She is the author of ten collections of poetry: White Dress, Fortress, Death Tractates, Bright Existence, Loose Sugar, Cascadia, Pieces of Air in the Epic, Practical Water, for which she won the LA Times Book Award for Poetry, Seasonal Works with Letters on Fire, which received the 2014 Griffin Poetry Prize and the Northern California Book Award for Poetry, and Extra Hidden Life, among the Days, which was awarded the Northern California Book Award for Poetry. Among the awards Hillman has received are the 2012 Academy of American Poets Fellowship, the 2005 William Carlos Williams Prize for poetry, and Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation.
A professor of Creative Writing, she holds the Olivia Filippi Chair in Poetry at Saint Mary's College of California, in Moraga, California.
Hillman is also involved in non-violent activism as a member of the Code Pink Working Group in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2016, she was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.
She is the author of ten collections of poetry: White Dress, Fortress, Death Tractates, Bright Existence, Loose Sugar, Cascadia, Pieces of Air in the Epic, Practical Water, for which she won the LA Times Book Award for Poetry, Seasonal Works with Letters on Fire, which received the 2014 Griffin Poetry Prize and the Northern California Book Award for Poetry, and Extra Hidden Life, among the Days, which was awarded the Northern California Book Award for Poetry. Among the awards Hillman has received are the 2012 Academy of American Poets Fellowship, the 2005 William Carlos Williams Prize for poetry, and Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation.
A professor of Creative Writing, she holds the Olivia Filippi Chair in Poetry at Saint Mary's College of California, in Moraga, California.
Hillman is also involved in non-violent activism as a member of the Code Pink Working Group in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2016, she was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.
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January 3, 2026really enjoyed meaning & mystery talk in particular! i like the framing of poems away from "difficult" and towards "mystery" allowing every poem to contain mystery even if it is a poem that is clear or understood on first impression. it also helped me understand the types of poems i am not drawn to despite enjoying a wide variety of form & approach - it is less about the ~legibility of the work and more the spirit. very woowoo but i appreciate how hillman lets spirit be such a big part of the craft of poetry because it truly is. laughed out loud when she compared the layers of a poem to a superbowl commercial montage.
October 1, 2025
I read this for a workshop class in my Poetry MFA and I thought it was brilliant. I was unfamiliar with Hillman prior to this reading, but have found a new favorite in the world of poetry. This book which consists of three talks she gave was illuminating to say the least. The way she frames these grand ideas about writing, like metaphor and metonymy gave someone who is new to talking about writing footholds, on which I could stand when looking at my own work as well as my classmates. All of that infused with Hillman's wit, expertly chosen and analyzed pieces of poetry, and her strong moral and activist roots made this a book I will return to again and again. I just know one read through will not be enough for me to grapple with everything laid out in this text.
March 2, 2026
Over the last weeks, I read three different writers on writing poetry: Fear Less: Poetry in Perilous Times by Tracy K. Smith; A Poetry Handbook: A Prose Guide to Understanding and Writing Poetry by Mary Oliver and this series of three lectures by Brenda Hillman.
While I loved the descriptive opening of how one becomes a practicing poet in Oliver’s handbook, my favourite out of the three is Brenda Hillman. The book records three lectures by a master female poet who is well known out of the San Francisco Renaissance, and as a young poet starting on my own journey, I was first taught by vetrans of the San Francisco Renaissnace (Black Mountain) tradition- Michael Boughn and Victor Coleman, themselves students of Robert Duncan and Robin Blaser. On many a dark Canadian winter evening, I spent my university evenings revisitig the words of Jack Spicer and Robin Blaser with their tutoring. Only now, when I think about how in Toronto we were inducted into the West Coast poetic tradition do I think of those days in the attic of Coach House Press as rare and quixotic as our teachers. When I approach Hillman, I feel as though I am back in that attic on a lumpy sofa making friendships that lasted for many years after we all moved into our 'adult' professions. Hillman brought me back to the joy, intimacy, and relational connection that poetry can create through her intimate, even magical lectures that speak to aesthetic freedoms rooted fimly in a moral responsibliity.
Joy is often a neglected element of serious poetic work, but her focus (especially) on magic/morality - show how what feels like paired opposites can become the philsophical heart of poetry. The conversation tone ranges widely across examples, senstive and deeply attuned readings, and a wellspring of inspiration. Hillman offers poets who already know the terminology of the craft a supercharged revaluing of what we've practiced for years with new life. In the end, she'll have you fully believing in a world where you are the bridge of words in relationship with a great mystery - the way the sensitivity of words holds all contradictions without simplifying our world.
While I loved the descriptive opening of how one becomes a practicing poet in Oliver’s handbook, my favourite out of the three is Brenda Hillman. The book records three lectures by a master female poet who is well known out of the San Francisco Renaissance, and as a young poet starting on my own journey, I was first taught by vetrans of the San Francisco Renaissnace (Black Mountain) tradition- Michael Boughn and Victor Coleman, themselves students of Robert Duncan and Robin Blaser. On many a dark Canadian winter evening, I spent my university evenings revisitig the words of Jack Spicer and Robin Blaser with their tutoring. Only now, when I think about how in Toronto we were inducted into the West Coast poetic tradition do I think of those days in the attic of Coach House Press as rare and quixotic as our teachers. When I approach Hillman, I feel as though I am back in that attic on a lumpy sofa making friendships that lasted for many years after we all moved into our 'adult' professions. Hillman brought me back to the joy, intimacy, and relational connection that poetry can create through her intimate, even magical lectures that speak to aesthetic freedoms rooted fimly in a moral responsibliity.
Joy is often a neglected element of serious poetic work, but her focus (especially) on magic/morality - show how what feels like paired opposites can become the philsophical heart of poetry. The conversation tone ranges widely across examples, senstive and deeply attuned readings, and a wellspring of inspiration. Hillman offers poets who already know the terminology of the craft a supercharged revaluing of what we've practiced for years with new life. In the end, she'll have you fully believing in a world where you are the bridge of words in relationship with a great mystery - the way the sensitivity of words holds all contradictions without simplifying our world.
December 13, 2024
(3.75 stars)
I’m not a poet so a lot of this goes over my head or is at least peripheral to my own experience and expertise. But there’s also enough here for anyone, poet or otherwise, to be inspired by. I’ll probably never be the protest warrior that Hillman has become, but I do appreciate the nuance she brings to the endeavor, always grounding it in humanism and the specific.
I’m not a poet so a lot of this goes over my head or is at least peripheral to my own experience and expertise. But there’s also enough here for anyone, poet or otherwise, to be inspired by. I’ll probably never be the protest warrior that Hillman has become, but I do appreciate the nuance she brings to the endeavor, always grounding it in humanism and the specific.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews