THE ONLY CONSTANT IS
THE PAGE NUMBER: BRENDA HILLMAN'S
CASCADIA
Hillmanâs 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
Hillmanâs sixth volume
of poetry, Cascadia, is likely to end up on anyoneâs
refrigerator,
theyâre too busy working for a greater good.
Hillmanâs 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 poetâs 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
Lâespace dâor ridé où jâai
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?
Youâre 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
Hillmanâs 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 Hillmanâs 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, Hillmanâs 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. Hillmanâs 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,
"Didnât
you / feel everything, finally? Weather taught / you to write
funny.
When it stops / being wrecked, weâll 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 someoneâs 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 itâs
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 wasnât 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 Hillmanâs
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 Iâm 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 Californiaâs 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). Iâll 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 heâs not guilty so heâll
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 womanâs body
is the change in a california. . . .
(Cascadia, 39-40)
Weâre fairly sure which words
are Shirleyâs
and which are Brendaâs, although Iâm not too sure of "still
trying to understand
money." Thereâs 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. Iâll 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 Îyouâ?" 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 dayâs horseback ride away from the other. On the
journey we
experience Brenda Hillmanâs authorial voice in full bloom, and in
the distance
her solid vision of Cascadia.
Texts cited:
Hillman, Brenda. "Engergizing the Reading Process:
Juliana Spahrâs
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
