000 01863pam a2200217 a 4500
001 041915
005 20231009192716.0
008 110817s1997 nhu 000 0 eng
010 _a96044572
020 _a0819522430
050 0 0 _aPS3558.I4526
_bL66 1997
082 0 0 _a811.54 HIL
100 1 _aHillman, Brenda
245 1 0 _aLoose sugar
_c/ Brenda Hillman.
260 _aHanover, NH
_b: Wesleyan University Press, published by University Press of New England
_c, c1997.
300 _aix, 115 p.
_c; 24 cm.
440 0 _aWesleyan poetry
520 _aIn the poem that gives title to this collection, "sugar, precious, warm, quickly used up, and easily lost" is a metaphor for time. Sugar was the rare commodity that brought borrowers to the door of Hillman's barely remembered childhood home in Brazil: "Later the rest of my life-time resembles warm sugar, something almost imaginary having to do with asking." Underlined by the book's section titles "space/time," "time/alchemy," "problem/ time," and so on, is the telescoping conceit of time, deceivingly abundant in personal recollections of adolescent sexuality in Southwestern U.S. suburbia, or impossibly scarce in the present complexities of family and work: "sex grows rather dim sometimes/ doesn't it but it comes back." The experimental nature of much of these poems seeming to emerge from the compulsion to "stop making sense" in the traditional fashion takes the writer into the margins of her page with poetic counterpoint in fine print, parentheses enclosing blank spaces, mind-bending quotes from Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, and other departures from linear narrative. And although some readers may tire of the ride, many will nevertheless be attracted to this West Coast poet, whose humor and irony never fail to shine through.
650 4 _aPoetry, American
942 _cMO
999 _c248874
_d248874