Under the Dust of Stars

Perhaps, in these poems, Fredric Hildebrand wants to arrive at a place “where silence is enough.” He knows that “Nothing is simple and alone.” He refuses to see what's not there, which is to say he sees what is: an emergency room doctor encounters “People walking/in all directions, everybody/trying to get to a different place;” a farmer says, “prayers just bounced off the ceiling.” He hears Pig Tail Turner at his junkyard saying, “You have to turn/over some stones, see what's underneath.” The poems in Under the Dust of Stars do turn over some stones, and all is not dark: at dusk on the dock, the poet can say, “I receive this blessing;” he can see the air is “woodsmoke/and wonder.” There is wisdom here. “What a person needs is a good fried egg,” he says, and “Happiness. It comes on unexpectedly.” You will turn back to this book because its world is true; these are real poems.

—Tom Montag