A scent     rather quietly     loves
the library.     Readers  look up:   a
life of paper     inside  the great
Life:  scent of greenly     ravished civilization ~
dream of inspiration     freed.  When a
book is     lifted     from horizon’s steel
that mystery     object  spreads     an oddness
each call number     a timeling  of
yellow math,      its curve     leftover from
epic.     The mind  had no  periphery
for meaning,   the several phoenician,  sailing
sideways     through vowels of the dead.
Brenda Hillman
Brenda Hillman has published seven collections of poetry: White Dress (1985), Fortress (1989), Death Tractates (1992), Bright Existence (1993), Loose Sugar (1997), Cascadia (2001), and Pieces of Air in the Epic (2005), all from Wesleyan University Press, and three chapbooks: Coffee, 3 A.M. (Penumbra Press, 1982), Autumn Sojourn (Em Press, 1995), and The Firecage (a+bend press, 2000). She has edited an edition of Emily Dickinson's poetry for Shambhala Publications, and, with Patricia Dienstfrey, co-edited The Grand Permisson: New Writings on Poetics and Motherhood (2003).
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