Poetry Readers Challenge discussion

I bought this on a whim, having never read Hillman. This is the fourth of a series Hillman has published using the elements - air, fire, earth and water.

When I started reading I was put off because I don’t usually like political poetry (and I hadn’t expected political poetry) and the poems didn’t seem to “hold together,” to cohere. They are highly stylized and turn suddenly and unexpectedly, seemingly on tangents. But after some pages I got into the wild energy of them, the freedoms they took, the vocabulary of activism and corporate and work “culture.” In fact the sixth poem ("Gemini Showers & Health Care Reform") threw in some pharmaceutical drug names and it was almost funny, and that was all I needed to open my heart.

Many of these are inspired by the Occupy movement, and the passionate defense of nature, and the malleability of language. I liked the daring turns and fragments thrown into the poems, the strange line breaks and forms.

I can’t replicate the indentations and such here, but this is the beginning of -

Equinox Ritual With Ravens & Pines

--so we said to the somewhat: Be born--
& the shadow kept arriving in segments,
cold currents pushed minerals
up from the sea floor, up through
coral & labels of Diet Coke blame shame
bottles down there--
it is so much work to appear!

I admired the poems even if I can’t claim they are my favorite style or subject matter. It wasn’t easy poetry, but I would be interested in reading another book in this series. I think Hillman’s writing is “brave,” not in a “I-told-my-childhood-secrets” way, but in a devil-may-care way or writing what feels right and letting the poem take its own course.

Here’s a link to one of the pieces from the book:
http://www.kenyonreview.org/kr-online...

Thanks for sharing this fine review, S. I'm intrigued by the overlap you are describing between political poetry and modernist poetry that resists "cohering." Traditionally, in school, we're taught that one of political poetry's objectives is to inspire change by altering readers' hearts and minds, and my first thought on reading your review was to wonder whether such poetry is not inherently less effective at accomplishing such goals if it lacks a cohesive vehicle.

I am instinctively inclined to shudder at the jargon of work and corporatism, which makes me all the more ready to praise a poet who has successfully co-opted such language toward a higher end (and all the more ready to be disappointed by a poet who tries to reclaim such language but fails).

I hate to say it but I didn't know Hillman was still writing. I read one poem of hers I liked in a Native American anthology from the seventies. It sounds like she is doing the same thing, a mix of elemental and industrial age imagery. I found it engaging, though as you say not exactly likable. That other poem kind of set up a dialogue between opposites or various elements of modern life that asked readers to question what they value. I'm on board for reading this book.

I visit the states once or twice a year and it always involves buying books, some of them on a whim. This was at the Strand in NY on a table with other intriguing poetry books, and it looked so different and compelling. So there you go, publishing industry packaging working for an experimental anti-establishment poet.

I like your take on this. I read it last year and could not figure out what I thought of it. I've kept the book because I met the author and because it's the kind of work that usually makes more sense on a second - or third - reading.