THE
ONLY
CONSTANT
IS
THE PAGE
NUMBER:
BRENDA
HILLMAN'S
CASCADIA
Hillman’s realized notion of Cascadia, too expansive to be
contained
in any individual poem, yet present in all of them, makes this
a breakthrough volume for her.
None of the poems in Brenda Hillman’s sixth volume
of poetry, Cascadia, is likely to end up on anyone’s refrigerator,
they’re too busy working for a greater good. Hillman’s realized notion
of Cascadia, too expansive to be contained in any individual poem,
yet present in all of them, makes this a breakthrough volume for her.
This conforms to a quotation from Hillman's own literary criticism: "Neither
complete fragment nor complete discontinuity is accurate. Only both
are accurate." (Spahr Review, p2.). Her poetry is not intentionally
obscure. However, given the scope of the greater work, individual
poems are not necessarily easy to comprehend on a first reading.
Cascadia starts with three epigraphs
which give some insight into the breadth of her poetics:
The poet’s destiny is to expose himself to the force
of the undetermined and to the pure violence of being
from which nothing can be made…but also to contain
it by imposing upon it restraint and the perfection of forms.
Maurice Blanchot, The Space of Literature
L’espace d’or ridé où j’ai passé le temps
(The space of wrinkled gold where I passed the time)
Pierre Reverdy, "Clear Winter"
(translation by John Ashbery)
"But where is the science in all of this, Mulder?
You’re talking alchemy here."
The X-files (Cascadia, 1)
The first epigraph immediately places the work
in a post-modern, non-linear vein. The juxtaposition of violence
and restraint provides a context for Hillman to bring geologic faults into
the world of drug addiction in "A Geology," . . . "When an addict tries
to leave / the desire to make himself over shifts from / what it felt like
to have been a subject; // L.A. will dwell beside San Francisco eventually."
(Cascadia,
7)
The second epigraph is critical to understanding
Hillman’s authorial voice. The consciousness of her poems, like this quote,
seems to come from a position off-center to our culture. It makes
room for such lines as "A skin between a day and a day is / Moths walking
along" (Cascadia, 67).
The third epigraph, touching on pop culture,
reminds us that while Hillman’s poems are grounded not only in the stars
and geologic time, they are also in the reality of daily experience.
The word "alchemy" seems just right, Hillman’s true field. She endeavors
to change lead into gold, and her poems, such as "A Geology" sometimes
do.
The only constant on the pages of Cascadia
is the page number. The typography of each 
page
is continually surprising. Hillman’s poems are nothing if not inconsistent
— her authorial voice is always shaking things up. The first poem,
"Sediments of Santa Monica," with its opening lines — "A left margin watches
the sea floor approach // It takes 30 million years" (Cascadia,
3) — is conventionally formatted, except for a few extra spaces and italics.
The second, "El Niño Orgonon," that ends on page five, is conventionally
formatted except that it is right-justified. It concludes, "Didn’t
you / feel everything, finally? Weather taught / you to write funny.
When it stops / being wrecked, we’ll write normally."
When we turn to page six, we encounter
"(enter: the 'we'---)"
centered in the middle of the page. Ah, perhaps this is a comment
that we will leave the more ethereal content of the first two poems and
allow humans join the fray.
Page seven brings us to "A Geology."
This seven-page poem is framed by four of the words of the poem on each
page. For example, the top margins contain the words,"range" and
"condition" in the corners. The page ends with
Landforms enable
us to scare. Where
Berkeley is, once a shallow sea with
Landforms to the west, called Cascadia.
No kidding, I read this.
A geology breaks in half to grow. A person whose drug like
a locust jumps across someone’s foot, singing—;
we disagree with D, who hates similes. (Cascadia, 7)
and the words "locust" and "disagree" in the bottom corners.
The last page of this poem contains the word "fault" in three of the corners
and "prevalent" in the lower right-hand corner. This is a good example
of how Hillman sets expectations, often to break them.
The poem ends:
A geology is
not a strategy. When an addict tries to leave
the desire to make himself over shifts from
what it felt like to have been a subject;
L.A. will dwell
beside San Francisco eventually.
Tempting to pun
on the word fault. All right,
say plot. All right, happens. The tendency
to fault relieves the strain. New islands
were forming to get the gist of it.
Whether it’s
better not to have been held by something.
The oldest limestone, prevalent between Big Sur
and Calaveras, is not "better than," say,
any other kind. The suffering wasn’t luckier,
it was a question of asking.
In the instead
hour, the difference of not recovering
from the difference of what we loved;
sameness is also true: stone like a spider
sucking the carapace
the same color as itself.
In the expiation
of nature, we are required to
experience the dramatic narrative of matter.
The rocks under
California are reigning in their little world.
This was set
down in strata so you could know
What it felt like to have been earth.
Although it is not her predilection (she often
weights each stanza — even line — evenly), for me this poem is transformed
by its final couplet. It summarizes Brenda Hillman’s authorial world
in which things viewed with an understanding eye are meant to be.
If they were not meant to be they would not have happened. This might
separate her from the language poets. While I’m no expert on language
poetry, I believe that part of the philosophical explanation for that body
of work revolves around the notion that causality is forced; that is, that
ordered sentences imply an ordered world. If I am correct in this,
then Hillman, while influenced by language poets, is not a language poet.
"Hydraulic Mining Survey" (Cascadia,
1), has interesting typology: the middle three stanzas are perpendicular
to the other text, as they might be in a hydraulic machine. This
is the first of many poems that honor California’s gold rush days.
The longest of these, "The Shirley Poem," includes snippets of letters
written from the California gold mines by "Dame Shirley," (Louise A. K.
S. Clapper), (Cascadia, 77). I’ll quote from the middle of
the poem:
IV.
It was a common
habit for
miners to bury their money (Re-bury?)
We fall in love
with what
we deem to be good. (deem
is a kind of Shirley word).
The world thinks earth is good,
and gold is the best earth
(still trying to understand money).
Shirley watched
them panning through gravel
in valleys of seasonal influence on
the East Branch of the North
Fork of the Feather River, contenting
herself with a philosophy of fortitude,
waiting, making bookcases from candle crates,
reading Coleridge, "who is never old."
Witnessing the
hanging of a thief
—"would around his green-leafed gallows"
—"a harmless, quiet, inoffensive person"
(hoping he’s not guilty so he’ll
feel less bad at being hanged).
Outside the Oroville
motel, a transubstantial
turning: grackles like computers starting up
in earth, the crystals stuffed with
water which makes moltenness unlikely.
(p. 116) "It
is almost like death
to mount to my favorite spot."
V.
The change in
a woman’s body
is the change in a california. . . .
(Cascadia, 39-40)
We’re fairly sure which words are Shirley’s
and which are Brenda’s, although I’m not too sure of "still trying to understand
money." There’s a slight possibility they were taken from the letters.
This same ambiguity (or, more precisely, indeterminability)
about voice continues in many of the later poems of the volume, particularly
those, starting with "Patterns of Pain in Certain Small Missions" (Cascadia,
61), that have the names of Californian Monks beneath each poem, and dates
ranging from 1771 through 1817. These poems are often surrounded
on the page by typographic marks. I’ll quote one of them in its entirety:
>>>>x>>>>>>x the future
x<<<<<<x<<<<
MOTHS WALKING ALONG
+ After a million years you drew
a breath.
+ Paused till it seemed more accurate
Not to
+
A skin between a day
and a day is
+ Moths walking along
+ A pointy lurch when it works >>>>
to keep
Wednesday from forever
x
In the same
manner the literal
+
Fits through
any place if you turn it sideways
+ As they fit the cross through
slatted doors
+ (A cross is a kiss turned sideways)
+ Others work in the garden
Spraying surround
squash blossoms
+ Whole panamas of water
Not to be lost in the
blend
Or consolidate the
rose
X
That dread or delight
Same mixture once assured
you
San Juan Bautista
1797
(Cascadia, 67)
This is typical of the care taken with these
poems. At first glance, both the arrows across the top and the plus-signs
down the margin seem decorative, almost random. And, while they work
on a decorative level, more importantly they significantly enhance the
meaning of the poem. The couplet at lines six and seven amplifies
the line across the poem, and the parenthetical line re-defines all the
plus-signs and the Xs.
A central question of this poem is "to whom
is the poem addressed — who is the ‘you’?" A Christian interpretation
might be that the "you" is God. What else after a million years could
take a breath, and to whom else could the poet speak so knowingly of fitting
crosses through slatted doors?
Readers of this volume are afforded a journey.
We are given the opportunity to travel with Hillman through geologic time
with its faults, through the gold rush days, back to the series of Missions,
each a day’s horseback ride away from the other. On the journey we
experience Brenda Hillman’s authorial voice in full bloom, and in the distance
her solid vision of Cascadia.
Texts cited:
Hillman, Brenda. "Engergizing the Reading Process: Juliana Spahr’s
New Nest," in How2, edited by Kathleen Fraser, vol. 1, No. 3, February,
2000; article available on the internet at :http://www.scc.rutgers.edu/however/v1_3_2000/current/alerts/hillman.html
Hillman, Brenda. Cascadia. Wesleyan University Press: Middleton,
Connecticut, 2001. ISBN: 0-81-956492-3 $12.06
© by Kevin Arnold
