DE RERUM NATURA

A volume of poetry contemplates the evolution of humankind.

Hillstrom’s previous works of poetry have grappled with how to define the purpose of humanity within a vast history. This collection of only nine poems traverses human evolution, from hominids to current society, intent on finding people’s previous definitions of life’s meaning. The volume is divided into four “Acts”: “Proems,” “Genesis RW,” “Conversations,” and “Poems for the Lyre.” In the introduction, the author explains that he “borrowed” the book’s title “from the Roman poet Lucretius.” (The addendum offers background on Lucretius.) Hillstrom favors biblical imagery and allusions to Greek myths, but the poems often feel as if they are stating historical references rather than interrogating or deciphering them. He asserts in the introduction that his initial motivation was to “describe and list the multiple phase transitions that were necessary for our ancestors in Africa to appear two hundred thousand years ago,” but they don’t all feel like fully formed ideas. In “An Improbable Observer,” the speaker laments Earth’s creation as a coalescence of spiritual and physical rationales that never quite explains itself: “A spaceless place. / Time’s arrow an empty quiver. / Constellations faceless. / A world barren of Logos. / From such exotic loins / This universe we dare / Contemplate…Spirits and gods assail the land. / Every bush glows. / Ghosts linger ominously. / A shaman poisons Adam.” The strongest pieces are in Act 4—“Poems for the Lyre”—due to their refined focus. “Lucy’s Descendants,” for example, addresses the hominid—whose remains, discovered in the 1970s, provided a crucial link in human evolution—with reverence and gloom: “At Stonehenge I roused your remains / While viewing distant cousins / Tug the stones for miles.” In “Windward Musings,” he considers how much people’s supposed definitions of life might be “a hostage / Of fairy tales, / Creation fables, and / Waves of starlight.” In his addendum, Hillstrom argues that individuals’ beliefs are often at odds with rational thought, that science often cannot be reconciled with what feels true. Putting these theories into poems, thus, may require people to accept the limits of their fantasies, to prepare to accept that there “may be no answer to the question, ‘Why does anything exist, rather than nothing?’ ”      

An intriguing but uneven collection that contemplates some of life’s oldest questions.