Archive for the ‘Brenda Hillman’ Tag
“The Outpost” (Doubtful Canyon Cattle Ranch) — Image by kenne
Various Outposts
You traded places
with the mystery — fire-torn, insulated leaves,
the steady eyes of the huckleberry — (Haven’t you
been sad most of your life? Come on,
all those outposts in the middle . . . they say the end
of growth is that you’ll suffer “purely” . . .)
One night, remember? No envy or hope.
What you sought
was here, what was done
could not be undone by you: there was the owl,
the night’s vice president,
the tangled sheets of moon —
— Brenda Hillman
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Lower Sabino Canyon from Phoneline Trail with View of Tucson In The Background — Panorama image by kenne
Time’s Body
—in the middle of the beginning they woke you
from a long sleep;
you could see the edges of the world
being formed, the boundaries
space would make in its eagerness
to be included,
the problem time would have
in its need to be the main thing.
The source of life is not life
but rebellion toward meaning.
When you saw the workers were already busy,
that the list you’rd been handed
was usual and impossible
and held it all, and thin
or most, your will
strong as a paper clip
you needed a location
from which to act on your assigned nature
so you chose time:
seed of light,
seed of torment—
— Brenda Hillman
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Visitors to this blog site know that I often use the title-lead, “Capturing the Moment.” I also use the title-lead, “Capturing the Word,” but have been neglectful in using this lead-in of late. Last July 9th, I posted, “Capturing the Word — Robert Hass.” For the most part, the “Capture the Word” series was my way of featuring writers presented at the “Writers In Performance” series, at Lone Star College – Montgomery, over the years. The series, started by my friend Dave Parsons (Texas State Poet Laureate, 2011) and under the guidance of the Montgomery County Literary Arts Council (MCLAC), has attracted many outstanding writers, including Poet Laureate of the United States, Robert Hass and his wife, Brenda Hillman. They appeared in the early days of the series, March 10, 1996, only three years after the series began. (The series is still going strong, with the next event being the 19th Annual Emily Dickinson Birthday Celebration with Nationally acclaimed Dickinson scholar, author and educator, Brenda Wineapple, who will discuss her book, White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson — and as always the “Gathering of Poets” at Conroe’s Corner Pub.)
Robert Hass is one of contemporary poetry’s most celebrated and widely-read voices, so I was surprised to read of his being clubbed recently during an Occupy Wall Street protest in Berkley, California. Hass and his wife had gone on campus to see what was happening and how the police and students behaved. “If there was trouble, we wanted to do what we could to protect the students,” Hass wrote in today’s New York Times — “Poet-Bashing Police.” Trying to protect Brenda, after a cop shoved her to the ground, Hass was clubbed. Click here to read the opinion piece.
“There are moments when the body is as numinous
as words, days that are the good flesh continuing.
Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings,
saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.”
— from MEDITATIONS AT LAGUNITAS by Robert Hass
kenne
Montgomery County Literary Arts Council (MCLAC), 1996 post-card flyer — Scanned Image
32.270209-110.860703
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