The poems in Brenda Hillman’s new collection, a companion volume to her recent Death Tratates, offer a dynamic vision of a universe founded on the tensions between light and dark , existence and non-existence, male and female, spirit and matter. Informed in part by Gnostic concepts of the separate soul in search of its divine origins (“spirit held by matterâ€). This dualistic vision is cast in contemporary terms and seeks resolution of these tensions through acceptance.