Brenda Hillman in conversation with Jesse Nathan
City Lights celebrates the publication of
Three Talks: Metaphor and Metonymy, Meaning and Mystery, Magic and Morality
By Brenda Hillman, with a foreword by Brian Teare
Published by University of Virginia Press
Three Talks is the first prose collection by the award-winning poet and educator Brenda Hillman. These short essays on six M’s of the art of poetry make the form accessible in a novel way, exploring words that might appear incompatible but become dancing partners in Hillman’s artistic vision: metaphor and metonymy; meaning and mystery; magic and morality.
First delivered as a series of talks at the University of Virginia, the essays maintain a casual, intimate tone. A consummate artist and technician, Hillman explores a wide array of poetic examples, focusing on method, subject matter, and inspiration to demonstrate how the skills offered by poetry have become critically important for our present moment.
Brenda Hillman, a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2016 to 2022, has written, edited, and cotranslated more than two dozen books, most recently, In a Few Minutes Before Later. She is a Professor Emerita at St. Mary’s College of California and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Jesse Nathan’s poetry has appeared in the New York Review of Books, the Paris Review, Kenyon Review, BOMB, The Believer, Zyzzyva, amongst many other journals and magazines. His work has been supported by fellowships from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Stanford University, the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley, Bread Loaf, and others. He’s a 2024 LABA Bay Area Fellow and a 2024 Robert Frost Fellow in Poetry at Bread Loaf. His first book of poems, Eggtooth, was published by Unbound Edition Press in 2023. The collection won the 2024 New Writers Award in Poetry.
This event is made possible by the City Lights Foundation.