Issue 1.1
Summer 2021
Brenda Hillman
Reflection:
This is one of three poems I wrote when the electrical power had been turned off during fire and wind events in California; this has become a way of life in our area. The style of strip-like lines is one I have deployed often since the 1990s, especially in my book Cascadia. It is useful style to create a sense of separate but linked poetic moments when the mind is navigating disjunctive impulses. One of my models for this style has always been the early poems of René Char.
Poem before the Power
Went Out
​
The future was handsome before the power went out
She wrote to say he was being nice
Scythes of eucalyptus weekday resentment
Pink Kleenex snagged in the fence
Where did it come from our hydropower
& if from the mountains as if
Wind in the country spiky sports hair
Elections electrons in free fall
They never knew where their power came from
Nuthatch left stripes when it flew off
Laws paused evening impeached them
Morning chill of being a self
Ceasefire on rural roads local displacement
& if from the rivers as if
She wrote in a notebook Once you were calm
Vorisively she made up a word
Coyote bushes filled with dire minutes
A spark whispered not this again
Old souls leaving the city
She called to ask are you being strong
How can we live now vision & science
In love with forever stones limped along
Brenda Hillman is the author of ten collections of poetry from Wesleyan University Press, including Extra Hidden Life, Among the Days (2018). She has edited and co-translated numerous books, most recently At Your Feet by Ana Cristina Cesar—co-translated with Helen Hillman. She currently serves as a Chancellor for the Academy of American Poets, co-directs the Poetry Program of the Community of Writers and teaches at Saint Mary’s College of California.