Hillman’s lyric experimentalism, as displayed in Practical Water, her eighth collection of poetry and third installment in a proposed tetralogy on the elements, offers an unlikely mediation between aesthetic and political concerns. Interested in engaging both traditions, Hillman rejects any partitioning that would disallow her political or aesthetical concerns from being hashed out simultaneously in the measure of a poem. With Practical Water, the State of the Union and State of Being are addressed with equal parts sensitivity and acuity. Hillman’s poems ask a reader to share in the activity of observation and contemplation regarding the complexities of everyday life as a citizen of the political and aesthetic. Here, the poem offers one an opportunity to retry one’s own philosophical and political opinions in a circuitry devised by an exquisite hand. While the conscience is at work mulling over one’s role in geo-political atrocity the heart endures the abstract shudder of pleasure that only poetry can afford. 10.29.09  Pablo Lopez

Brenda Hillman Reading at UPB in September