Bright Existence

<P>The poems in Brenda Hillman's new collection, a companion volume to her recent Death Tratates, offer a dynamic vision of a universe founded on the tensions between light and dark, existence and non-existence, male and female, spirit and matter. Informed in part by Gnostic concepts of the separate soul in search of its divine origins («spirit held by matter»). This dualistic vision is cast in contemporary terms and seeks resolution of these tensions through acceptance.</P>