These poems use the geography of California as metaphor for exploring fundamental pressures and issues of everyday life. Named for the ancient landform that preceded present-day California, Brenda Hillman's Cascadia creates from geological turbulence a fluid poetics of place. The book is Hillman's sixth collection and her most wide-ranging. The problem the book poses is nothing less than a phenomenology of transformation. In her previous work, Hillman's investigations of alchemy and of contemporary life have created their own distinct mythologies, and here she turns to the first of the four basic elements, earth, to demonstrate a visionary science with a combination of lightness, wit and force. Embodied in syntax as unpredictable as the earth's movements, these poetic forms speak to and query the landforms as the line between faith and science blurs. Short lyrics inspired by the California missions, each with a retablo of punctuation, reflect on the solitude and history of the sign as it moves through the quotidian. Set among these lyrics, each of the three long poems in the book presents an aspect of Hillman's topography. By the end of this powerful work, a new state is visible: a Modernist poetics, subjected to immense internal pressures, above and beneath unsettled ground, has emerged in original shapes In Hillman's sixth collection, readers encounter a mature poet taking more risks with each successive volume. On a smaller scale, but with no less intensity, she does for her adopted state of California what Charles Olson did for the small town of Gloucester. In the opening poem, she gives herself a directive that will carry her through the rest of the volume, and readers would do well to heed it: "Easy on the myths now/ Make it up." Her tri-fold exploration encompasses geography, spirituality, and work, and she uses history to uncover a self that can be of use in this rapidly usurped environment. Thus, California's numerous missions provide a grounding in religion, while Hillman's meditations on landscape are prayerlike. But she does not overlook the state's dreaded aspects El Ni?o, earthquakes, the eroding coastline, the hopes of gold that ignited the dreams of so many, and the dioxins humans have inserted into the atmosphere. In these circumstances, words take on weight, so that naming is building. As in Hillman's previous work, technical innovations are as important as the subjects she chooses, though some of the purely typographical aspects seem a bit superfluous. Hillman's previous volume, Loose Sugar, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Not for the casual poetry reader, Cascadia is nevertheless highly recommended. Rochelle Ratner, formerly Poetry Editor, "Soho Weekly News," NY Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. "Spins a luminescent web of vivid, disjunctive lines . . . Her big, ambitious project, and her breathtaking single phrases, will certainly impress some readers, but Hillman's best poems owe the least to her overarching cascade."― Publishers Weekly "Spins a luminescent web of vivid, disjunctive lines . . . Her big, ambitious project, and her breathtaking single phrases, will certainly impress some readers, but Hillman's best poems owe the least to her overarching cascade."― Publishers Weekly "I recommend this book to all who doubt poetry's capacity to reinvent itself. Hillman is making language dance for her."― Los Angeles Times Book Review 6 x 9 trim. LC 2001-035504 Brenda Hillman has received many awards, including a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award for Poetry. She lives in Kensington, California, and teaches at St. Mary's College in Moraga, CA. Her other books, all published by Wesleyan, include Loose Sugar (1997), Death Tractates (1992), Bright Existence (1992), and Fortress (1989). Used Book in Good Condition