Dear Brenda Hillman 2020

Dear Samara,

Thank you so much for your very thorough reading of my poem, “The Late Cold War” and for writing such a deep and articulate letter. I’ll bet your teacher is proud of your writing!

One of the things I appreciated right away about your letter was that you did a little extra reading and thinking when there was something you didn’t understand.

You also thought a little more deeply and spent a little more time with the lines that intrigued you, and that is exactly what the speaker/I was trying to present in the poem.

Schoolgirls understand everything! I am glad you got the support I was trying to offer women and girls in the piece. The image of the mother serving dinner in a housedress in the fallout shelter is an example of the psychological disconnect of the era.

The trouble is, with social media, with memes and flashes and quick hits on everything, the values poetry can give are sometimes lost...

The timeless thing about poetry, regardless of the style or even the time period, is that is often takes us to a mysterious place in ourselves, or to a mysterious place or an event or an idea or language itself, and we need to dwell there.

You visited that mystery in your reading of “the hour of lemon and water.” That line means what it says; it doesn’t refer to anything in particular. As I am writing you, I’m in Northern California in a heat wave drinking cold water with Meyer lemon slices from our garden – so, this is the hour of lemon and water! But your reading is just as accurate—lemon and water are associated with emotional states; that is a more symbolic reading.  Many interpretations of such an image can be justified, which is why poetry class is very different from accounting class! There are multiple ways of being right!

You asked about the man in the poem who tells the poet he doesn’t understand her poetry. Though someone did say something almost like this to me about schoolgirls, the figure is a composite—probably like a woven fabric of many encounters I’ve had; people like this man might say, Hey, why does poetry use so many complex images? They want all poetry to be like greeting cards. Once, a different man raised his hand in the middle of my poetry reading and said, “I don’t understand your poetry!”  He would never say, I don’t understand this advertisement, even if it uses the same collage techniques as a modern poem. The poetry I like best invites more than one reading.  

People get nervous about poetry when they think there is only one point. There are many points.  In this poem, the speaker notes that her experience growing up in a desert trying to think, even as a young girl, about the threat of nuclear war helped her understand reality, which was very mixed.

Thank you so much for your readership. Please keep poetry in your life, and I hope you will also write poems!

Sincerely yours,

Brenda Hillman

Dear Angela,

Thank you for writing me about your experience of reading “The Late Cold War,” and for giving me the great gift of your readership!

You wrote several wonderful paragraphs, with two or three significant questions; you comment on the line, “But sir, schoolgirls understand everything.”

My poem was written at a time when I was doing a lot of protesting with grassroots women’s organization.  We were protesting the imperialism and social injustices our country tolerates; I was thinking a lot about the role of women and girls leading protests.

Schoolgirls do understand everything; “we know what we should want from life,” you write. Knowledge of art, science, literature, history, technology and so on—any knowledge— is acquired by hard work and absorption of a particular field of study. The “understanding everything” in this poem has to do with having the intuitive insight you write about in your letter to me, and seeing the irony in the Fifties culture described in the poem—the mother wearing a housedress and an apron in a bomb shelter; there is definitely a disconnect there. The ornamental oranges are good for display only. The schoolgirl’s understanding yours now and mine in the Fifties and Sixties—is of  something pretty odd.

You asked about writing in relation to the male perspective, represented by the man in the poem; he asks for an easy poem.  Like many people who haven’t read much modern or contemporary poetry, he needs Poetry for Dummies. The request for poetry that seems old fashioned used to annoy me very much. The figure in this poem was based on several questions posed to me in poetry readings. He wants simple poetry.

Recently I’ve felt more sympathetic toward this kind of person; he needs access a kind of easy truth some poetry provides; he doesn’t want to learn the idioms of contemporary art. He is like the person likes paintings only with figurative realism and doesn’t want any abstract elements at all. I respect that people sometimes call for simpler styles than mine. 

I like my readers to feel better for different reasons, including the hope that they will have learned something strange or mysterious. So the line you ask about—the hour of lemon and water—is such a line. My reading of that line would probably be different from yours; it would have to do with an afternoon light or time that is tender and golden, in which you have extra feeling about something. You can interpret it in any way you like.

Thank you so much for writing to me, and I hope you will keep poetry in your life. If you need suggestions of what to read, I hope you will write to me.

With best regards,

Brenda Hillman

Dear Nikita,

Please accept my thanks for keeping poetry in your life while you are going to high school in such a stressful time. I’m hoping poetry is going to keep beauty and strange truth as a place of refuge for you, a little parallel universe, even if you don’t know what will ground you.

I’m really glad to answer some of your important questions about my poem “The Late Cold War”; I’m glad you are a history buff, so you’ll know how important the period of the Cold War was in the Fifties and early Sixties especially.  Even though it was unlikely that there would be nuclear war, there was a lot of nuclear arms build-up. So the poem has a really ironic tone because the mother was serving prepared T.V. dinners in the bomb shelter.

You are quite right in your letter; poetry was an escape for me, a shining light, but it was also a place where I could put my odd observations. I think children have a lot of odd thoughts they do not feel they can share, but those thoughts can always go backward and understand you. Poetry makes little harmless arrows straight into your soul.

You ask whether my voice has changed over time. Yes, what I have to say about this may be sort of obvious after you study a lot of other poets,  but the voice of a writer is a combination of things, not just a person speaking “straight from the heart”or from experience; there’s always an aspect of imitation, a literary construction.

For example, as soon as I started reading Charles Baudelaire, I wanted to sound like him and as soon as I read Emily Dickinson I wanted to sound like her. If I’m lucky enough, some of the young women who read my work may want to imitate me.  I like very modernist and post modernist poetry, as you can probably tell, so I channel other sounds through my poetic voice/s; I go to poetry to find the freedom to express the passion about being alive. The experience poetry brings is mostly an interior journey, even in poetry that is performed.

The lower case “i” is a good example of this; there are poets in the early Twentieth Century who started using it, and I liked a poet named e.e.cummings when I was about your age; he used the lower case “i” have used it in my poetry for the last couple of decades because I/i feel it’s a little less egotistical, and I like the tiny dot over the little column—it seems modest but strong.

Please keep your strong sense that girls know a lot!! Stay strong in this tough time.

Best,

Brenda Hillman

Dear Layla Raye,

I was very glad to receive your letter from Pittsburgh. I have two grandsons in Pittsburgh, one who is entering the fifth grade; it is a very nice town, with so many beautiful bridges. The bridges of Pittsburgh all look like poems, going across three realities. I hope you will write a poem about living in Pittsburgh and send it to me.

And I’m delighted to hear that you may want to pursue a career in writing for television. Not only is it a great medium for telling subtle truths, but it is the perfect place to communicate with a mass audience, to address social justice issues as well as the beauty and intensity of the world.

And I’m really happy you are being introduced to poetry in the eighth grade; please thank your teacher for me, and tell her or him I send gratitude <3

You are right, my poem “The Late Cold War” does introduce some documentary elements, and the speaker tries to describe the context of the Fifties and Sixties when she learned to write. Some poets are using documentary materials in their poems now, to make a kind of hybrid poetry; the inclusion of the detail from the diorama was one of those.

Those were decades of some prosperity for the U.S., but even so, there was a lot of fear about nuclear war. It was after World War II and the Korean War but people quickly forget the dangers of war and militarism and many nations were building up armaments again  Both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. were trying to deal with the threat. American families were preparing for the possibility of having to survive in a bunker-style shelter.

The image in the poem of the mother serving the dinners to the family was supposed to look calm and happy is of course one of the complexities the girl in the poem was experiencing and that is why I make the remarks to the man who thinks poetry should be easy. Poetry is complex and intense, like the human soul; sometimes the styles are dreamlike or abstract, and sometimes they are a little more decorative, or they can be deep and plain. That’s one of the good things about poetry.

One of the main things I really love in your letter is how well you describe the variety of arts that are traditionally associated with women. Girls and women have been associated with specialized forms of art, especially household arts, and these are often considered lesser arts. There are so many things to think about here, but of course, people of all genders should have opportunities in all the arts. Many underappreciated and marginalized arts, including the fabric arts, the culinary arts and many forms of household arts, could be better represented in art history. There are millions of women artists who have not had their work recognized—including quilt-makers and secret poets!

I hope you will continue to read and write poetry. Thank you again for your wonderful letter.  

Best wishes,

Brenda Hillman

Dear Leo,

Thank you very much for your profoundly moving letter; I was glad to read your feedback about my poem, “The Late Cold War.”

The thing I loved about your letter is the empathic way you connected the discrimination you experience as an Asian American with the sexism the speaker is pointing out. She is quoting the man’s remarks and describing her own childhood. I don’t know about your memory of childhood, but I remember it as very complex and full of memories that are symbolic as well as full of strange detail, in this case the ornamental oranges from the speaker’s childhood—they are not juicy oranges; they are just supposed to look good and not be edible, which is very odd.

The man who addresses the poet wants poetry to be made simple so that schoolgirls can understand it. A person said this something like this to me, but the man is in some ways generic, representing someone who might make such a remark. It is, as you say, condescending, but also sort of inaccurate about poetry. I actually think a lot of people seek spiritual truth from poetry that reaches their hearts exactly because it is not understandable immediately.

The thing that touches me very much in your letter is how you write about the connection between misogyny and racism. It is terribly sad that in this country you have to cover your face as much to mask your identity as to protect against the virus. I’m so sorry. I deplore the condition of our country right now, whereby bias and hatred are encouraged by ignorant leadership—or non-leadership!

I am white and am trying to learn to be a better ally to BIPOC who are experiencing increased stress and hatred but this world can be shocking, as you point out.  In my childhood in the Fifties and Sixties, the experience of girls was often culturally discounted and devalued. At the same time, I realize my whiteness gives me privileges. Nearly all women have experienced bias of some kind, and we have to see connections between our experiences and work for a better understanding.

I am grateful for the last paragraph in your letter, and you are of course part of my audience!!  I am a big reader of poetry and because the literary canon is very male, I very often primarily relate to poems written by men. I wrote this poem when I was doing a lot of protesting with a group of women who opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I was thinking a lot about how to write political poetry in a women’s tradition that is also very personal. I am really grateful that you found my poem could make a statement that you could relate to and also find some comfort in.

Also, I notice from your signature that you are in a high school that specializes in mathematics, science and engineering. Please keep in mind that S-T-E-M students need the leaves and flowers provided by art and music and poetry—I hope you will go on reading poetry for a long time.

With best regards,

Brenda Hillman

Dear Huda,

Thank you so much for your wonderful letter.  I am so glad my writing has reached your heart. It is every writer’s dream to have good and thoughtful letters such as yours.

You mention that you connected with my poem “The Late Cold War” partly because the speaker indicates that poetry can come out of the struggles of childhood. I think this is very true, don’t you? Many writers have childhoods with a lot of intensity; it’s not that writers only experience the difficulties of childhood, it’s that writers might be a little more keyed in to the layered intensities of their youth because they are extra sensitive.  

I would not trade my childhood for anything, because even though we lived with the threat of nuclear war in the Fifties and Sixties, as the poem describes, it was a very magical childhood because I grew up with my brothers in the desert of Arizona. I loved playing in the desert and believe in the magical spirit world of the place. The landscape is beautiful, though it knows a lot of stress, and is increasingly less habitable because of climate change.

On a writing-craft note, you asked about the “i” vs. the “I” and why I used both forms.  In my most recent books, I have been using the lower case “i” as the poetic speaker, so she will be even with par with the “you” or “we” or “she”; many poets use this device, and for me it seems to take some of the ego out of the poetic universe. One capital “I” remains in the poem because it is the only one at the beginning of a sentence.

“The psyche rises like mist from things” is just my way of characterizing the idea from the philosopher Heraclitus that that there is a relationship between the elements; he was ahead of his time because he didn’t see the elements as isolated and he saw that fire can turn to water and water can turn to air and so on. So the soul/psyche can change to a different element.

I really admire the paragraph about your experience of being a young woman whose poetry comes from a “pursuit of knowledge and complexity,” as you call it. You are a writer after my own heart, and of course there are many in our great poetic traditions, many women poets writing with complexity and unusual stamina.

You express some nervousness that your poems will not reach the right audience, or that they may not make it to the readers who need them.  In the last few lines of this poem the speaker makes a claim that the poetry you write will not abandon you; sometimes people think that poetry or art in general has failed them when they cannot connect with it, but in fact, they have only to open themselves to it. The poor man in my poem couldn’t get there but you can, of course.

Very best wishes,

Brenda Hillman   

Dear Zoë,

Thank you for your readership! And thank you for your smart responses and questions about my poem “The Late Cold War.”

I am glad you liked the description of the mid-Twentieth Century family in the poem. I was trying to remember the early Sixties when we were undergoing a lot of training for a nuclear attack, and I think you caught my intent perfectly; there was a sinister quality in the models of the family being very happy and being served “T.V. dinners” (they were served on little aluminum trays that were somewhat floppy); the white mom was wearing an apron in those pictures. Of course it is part of the irony of the poem that the training for nuclear war is supposed to look benign!

The poet wants to tell the man who doesn’t understand poetry that there’s a reason to write complex things—because there are so many layers of reality! Poetry is very good at getting all the layers, like the layers of reality under the earth—where so much life can be discovered the more you dig—yet, you can also just enjoy the surface.

It was great to read your affirmation of girls and young women. Sometimes I think we have come very far as girls and women, and sometimes it seems we’re still in a period of “catch-up”; I like the way you describe the passion and activism of the girls and young women around you, and I’m sure, recognizing the power of girls and women, you will do a great deal with your life.

You ask about the number of drafts I write. When you are in school, it seems like a chore to have to revise something. But if you choose to be a writer, you can actually love the process of revision. I consider writing and revision to be the same thing; I let each new “version” teach me something new. I often write as many as fifty drafts, not because I have to but because I am enjoying myself, and I like to write by hand on paper (that will be a hard sell for your generation but I think writing with pencils makes you a better writer. If I’m not in the mood for a particular pencil, I ask it why it is not cooperating! Then I start the poem again every time and try to get into a bit of a dream state where I just let the new words flow in, more and more strangely. I hope you will try this method in your poems, and don’t let anyone talk you into being consistent!

I’m excited to hear you are going to be a creative writing major. The world needs more writers, and please tell your parents that it **is** the most practical major, because after all, every field of work needs more imagination, better writing skills and more empathic responses to our crises as a culture.  I hope you’ll go to a school where they have a strong creative writing faculty.

With all best wishes,

Brenda Hillman

Dear Emuna,

I am re-reading your letter today when all of California is experiencing a heat wave, with multiple fires burning. You wrote to me from the middle of Los Angeles, so I imagine you are in the same condition as we are in the Bay Area, though I hope things will be better for both of us by the time you read my reply!

You begin by telling me about your family and about your hopes for creating a financial organization that will enhance economic justice for those in struggle. I applaud your dreams for doing this, and I also hope we will see more justice at the level of leadership—less money spent on the war machine and more money to repair our schools, roads and infrastructure. I hope all idealistic young people will be actively working to make the lives of economically oppressed people improve. We have a lot of work to do as a country.

Thank you so much for your kind words about my poem, “The Late Cold War.” It was written when I was doing a lot of anti-war activism in relation to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I was working primarily with a group of women activists to bring visibility to the conflict a lot of people were ignoring.

Women were among the leaders in these recent anti-war movements, and though we did not bring an end to that war before a lot of damage was done, we did not just sit at home. And of course, women started #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter.

You are right in pointing out that the speaker thinks girls and women have power to understand and to speak about complex states, and poetry takes us to those things.

The speaker in the poem wants poetry not to have complexity and nuance but that is the only way certain kinds of art can convey reality. She is answering a man (sort of a stitched-together figure of someone I met and someone I imagined) who wants poetry to be very straight-forward; he is at the same time discounting poetry and women. 

The speaker asks him to keep the mysteries of poetry in his life; before abandoning poetry, he should think of it as his ally, his one good wing, because it can take him to a new zone. Lines like that come to me, and I know they are in some sense true, even though they are a little hard to grasp at a rational level. In my mind—if this were a novel—I would have a little hope for the man; I believe he can be redeemed.

You ask how I have been treated as a female poet; I have had some advantages because of my whiteness and occasionally some bias because of being a woman. When I started writing, some people were still referring to a woman poet as a “poetess”! I am married to a wonderful male poet; he is often treated with more respect when we travel together in other countries and sometimes even in America, but I understand this will not be a permanent state of the world. I feel very lucky to be a women writing and teaching poetry now; it is a profoundly meaningful way to spend time. I hope you will keep poetry in your life!

Best wishes,

Brenda Hillman

Dear Sofia,

Thank you so much for your letter.

I want to send very good wishes to you in this difficult time.

I love the questions you asked about “The Late Cold War,” including questions about the way memory works and where things are stored.

The first few lines of the poem are addressed to a kind of general questioner, but based on some questions I get from people who want all poetry to be easy on the “first take.” I think sometimes people forget that poets are using very compressed language, and it’s all right to read things more than once.

And I like that you say “a poem doesn’t have to be concrete to resonate with its readers.” This poem has a kind of mix of concrete detail (literally! The fall out shelters!) and meditation.

I don’t know about your poems, but I find that when I recall small details, especially details of childhood in a poetic context, the activity is something like a mixture of dream and recollection.

The fall out shelters – in my memory— were models of concrete bunkers. These models or pictures were very common in the late Fifties and early Sixties, when Americans were trying to prepare children for the possibility of a nuclear attack, and we had little models of what those might look like; they even had little kitchens, and the mother was serving dinner to the family wearing a dress and an apron, which was really strange to me because it was showing a false picture of calm. The speaker/poet in the poem is remembering them— probably a blurred memory, some combination. Sometimes a poet is faithful to literal memory or to partial memory and desired memory.

The nice thing is about poetic memory is that it is sometimes stored in lines, and sometimes in vague dreams.

I’m curious to know whether the reference to ornamental oranges has any meaning in Wisconsin — do you have that kind of tree in Milwaukee? The oranges are startling, with very thick rinds and bright globelike orbs but no juicy interior. I always felt ill at ease with the Tucson variety because they seemed only to be about good looks!

I hope you will keep poetry in your life forever!

My best,

Brenda Hillman