Introduction & Overview of Air for Mercury by Brenda Hillman

Air for Mercury Introduction

Brenda Hillman's poem "Air for Mercury" was published in her 2001 collection Cascadia, which most critics acknowledge is Hillman's most ambitious work, if not her most accessible work. The volume was inspired by Hillman's love for her adopted state of California. Cascadia refers to the prehistoric landmass that predates California and America's West Coast—a landmass that was submerged under the ocean more than 100 million years ago. In Cascadia, Hillman uses this ancient geological occurrence as a springboard to map the various geological and cultural characteristics of modern-day California. But, as Hillman herself notes in an online interview with Poets & Writers magazine, "The main geography of the book is the idea of mind-as-earth." The book, then, becomes an exploration of the shifting tectonic plates of the human mind, what she refers to as "the ceaseless slow and potentially violent nature of change . . . the upheaval of ideas...
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