Loose Sugar

Poems from the Pushcart Prize winner. "I see Loose Sugar as part of the anatomy of the rare bird of 'autobiographical' experimentation." —Barbara Guest

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.

"A wild ride that includes quotes, parenthetical fragments, monetary charts and wonderful poetic snapshots of Hillman's native Brazil (where her father worked in the sugar industry) as well as descriptions of her current life . . . In many ways, the collection lives up to its title: its attention is scattered, and so are its many pleasures." —Publishers Weekly