Fortress

by Brenda Hillman

In the title poem "Fortress," the medieval walled castle is the stronghold in which the family dwells. There are stories here of people in the "fortresses" of the self, the city, or the natural world.
All these poems have in common a lyrical approach to solitude ("the only protection / against death/ was to love solitude") and an ironical vision for which love of beauty and the longing for the world are the cure. Hillman combines the imagistic with narrative; in her poems lyricism wars with irony; the solitary noticing consciousness is in control - because the observed world seems beautiful to the observer, great joy is possible despite the sense of difficulty or sorrow.
The language here is rich and elegant. Truth is relentlessly addressed.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Hardcover

First published July 15, 1989

About the author

Brenda 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.

Reviews

[Taylor Franson-Thiel · Rating 5 out of 5]

While I think I’ll always prefer her later work, stepping back into early Hillman is such a joy. That last poem?? Holy. Shit.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super interesting to encounter her earlier work-- much to admire in these poems, about the quiet spaces outside, in life, between marriages, as a parent. More in Attention Span this year.

[Megan Snyder-camp · Rating 3 out of 5]

too skittery--I was so excited after adoring the first poem, "A Life of Action," which opened up a whole new world of poems about grocery shopping, but then couldn't find a place to settle anywhere else in the book. Maybe Loose Sugar will fit better.

[Janie · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of the best and approachable book of poems i can remember. must read.