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PAUL E NELSON

Brenda Hillman City

Brenda Hillman City

The update of an essay, (Writing or Re-Writing: A Primer on Prevision) really a series of notes, on some of the history of what Robin Blaser called “The Practice of Outside” centers around Brenda Hillman’s wonderful new poem published in the book Seasonal Works with Letters on Fire. Here’s an excerpt from the Ecopoetics Minifesto: A Draft for Angie:

E–then a poem is its own action, performing practical miracles:
1. “the miracle of language roots” –to return with lexical adventures
2. “the miracle of perception” –to honor the senses
3. “the miracle of nameless feeling” –to reflect the weight of the subjec-
tive, the contours of emotion
4. “the miracle of the social world” –to enter into collective bargaining
with the political & the social

You can read the whole essay, along with all of Brenda Hillman’s “Minifesto” here.