Loose Sugar

An elaborate collection of poems that culminate in a meditation on the possibility of a native and feminine language,

Loose Sugar is an alchemical manuscript disguised as a collection of poems, or vice versa. Either way, the primal materials of which this book is comprised -- love, sex, adolescence, space-time, depression, post-colonialism, and sugar -- are movingly and mysteriously transmuted: not into gold, but into a poet's philosopher's stone, in which language marries life.

Structurally virtuosic, elaborate without being ornate, Loose Sugar is spun into series within series: each of the five sections has a dual heading (such as "space / time" or "time / work") in which the terms are neither in collision nor collusion, but in conversation. It's elemental sweet talk, and is Brenda Hillman's most experimental work to date, culminating in a meditation on the possibility of a native -- and feminine -- language.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
Published: 03/21/1997
ISBN: 9780819522436
Pages: 127
Weight: 0.43lbs
Size: 8.93h x 5.95w x 0.39d
Award: National Book Critics Circle Award - Nominee

Review Citations: Publishers Weekly 03/31/1997 pg. 71
Library Journal 11/15/1997 pg. 61