Hill has published widely in poetry journals and is the author of a collection entitled In Praise of Motels. In the following essay, she contends that the speaker of "The Hospital Window" has no choice but to be alone in his experience with spiritual transcendence.

"The Hospital Window" is a poem that takes readers inside the mind of a man trying to deal with the impending death of his father. This scenario may conjure up several typical images that accurately describe what he must be feeling—grief, great sorrow, even fear and anger. But this poem goes a step further in the realm of human response to a tragic event. The persona here experiences a sudden and overwhelming happiness, and he does so in a very unlikely place—the middle of a busy street. The oddity of his unforeseen euphoria, however, is not the main idea behind...