In a Few Minutes Before Later

Brenda Hillman is a pioneering ecopoet who challenges traditional poetic forms to capture human and non-human experiences. Her work offers courage in times of existential peril and represents the most necessary and fresh in American poetry. When you meet the one you love, it is rare and requires courage.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 200 pages
Publication date: 26 April 2024
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press

Brenda Hillman is a pioneering ecopoet who has paved the way for numerous young and emerging artists. Her work is characterized by fierce yet loving, risk-taking, and beautiful poetry. Hillman employs various poetic forms, including short dialogues, meditations, and trance techniques, to capture inner states. She also utilizes narrative, documentary, and scientific materials to document daily events during the pandemic, planetary crisis, political turmoil, and racial unrest. Hillman's poetry offers courage even in the face of existential peril, representing the most necessary and fresh aspects of American poetry. In a half-unwieldy life, we make, under the hyaline sky, while the dead drink from zigzag pools nearby. If they save us in our wild incapacities, in the timing of the world's harm in a little pettiness in our own hearts while others take our madrigals in shreds to a tribunal, when others say we should feel grateful to be minimally adequate for the world's triple exposure or some tired committee, the ones who love us, how do they break through our defenses? We're tired today. Come back later. Their baffled voices melt our wax walls with a candle, the ones who understand what being is—the glowing, the broken, the wheels, the brave ones—they have their courage, you have yours. When you meet the one you love, it is so rare. When you meet the one who loves you, it is extremely rare.

Dimension: 229 x 178 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780819501226