The Blog

The latest collection by Brenda Hillman, an exploration of living phenomena and their mysteries, ignites a fiery post-lyric grammar of existence. Hillman’s devotion to social justice—her unwavering belief in poetry’s capacity to address root causes of our political strife—ultimately purifies our fallen world in the languages of elemental fire.

Seasonal Works with Letters on Fire is organized in two parts, “I. On the Miracle of Nameless Feeling” and “II. A Sense of the Lively Unit,” wherein the politics and aesthetics of our environment—and the poetics of a spiritual realm—converge in an abecedarian manifesto:

“Ecopoetics Manifesto”

p. 29 “radical intensity, uncertainty, complexity, contradiction” in lettered fragments
vs. anthropocentricism

We were saddened to learn of the recent passing of legendary Slovenian poet Tomaž Šalamun, who was both an Iowa Review contributor and a visiting writer at the University of Iowa's International Writing Program. Christopher Merrill, director of the IWP and one of Šalamun's translators, said in 2001, "Šalamun has exerted a great deal of influence on many younger poets, including me. He's a world-class poet. He's easily the best poet of the Balkans, and one of the best of them all." (Read Merrill's recent tribute to Šalamun on the Huffington Post.) For more on Tomaž Šalamun, please visit the Poetry Foundation.