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...
POETRY
Fredric Hildebrand
Fredric Hildebrand is a retired physician living in Northern Wisconsin and Central California. He has written three poetry chapbooks: "Northern Portrait" (Kelsay Books, 2020), "A Glint of Light" (Finishing Line Press, 2020), and "Under the Dust of Stars" (Kelsay Books, 2023). When not writing or reading, he plays acoustic folk guitar and explores the outdoors with his wife and dogs.
Fredric Hildebrand is a retired physician living in Northern Wisconsin and Central California. He has written three poetry chapbooks: "Northern Portrait" (Kelsay Books, 2020), "A Glint of Light" (Finishing Line Press, 2020), and "Under the Dust of Stars" (Kelsay Books, 2023). When not writing or reading, he plays acoustic folk guitar and explores the outdoors with his wife and dogs.
Books
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, “...
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Northern Portrait
Fredric Hildebrand can paint this “northern portrait” because he has a careful eye looking over the “summer farms and fields” and the “pine-thick forests.” He can see the “intersection of gray abandonment” and the sign at the abandoned tavern, which still speaks “the old language.” He remembers the hundred years in his grandmother’s eyes “like /...
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A Glint of Light
In this stunning debut collection, A Glint of Light, Fredric Hildebrand celebrates--with sadness, praise, and astute observations-nature, the seasons, and people among us. In short luminous poems, he reveals the extraordinary aspects of ordinary things.
A native of Neenah, Wisconsin, Hildebrand weaves this rural setting into his work, paying...
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Other Writing
Darkness spreads above the mountains
like a plume of oil. Cool wind draws
apart three-day clouds. Soon a carousel
of stars in the moonless sky-bowl, some
in formations we can name. Lying back
toward midnight on the truck hood,
we search for transient streaks of meteors.
The ticking engine as it cools. The smell
of cattle and rain-soaked hay. A coyote
yips in the distance.
Dew settles on our clothes. I rub the ridges
on the back of your hand.
Somewhere, the unseen asteroid dust.
At dusk, behind the Prince Palace Truck Stop,
an irrigation ditch gurgles between backyards
and the highway.
My dog strains at his leash, snaps at small insects
rising from the cottonwoods along the bank.
Beyond the muddy water and a car up on blocks,
tinny ranchera music drifts on the warm breeze.
A few men drink and laugh, pitching horseshoes
in a dusty lot. Women tend a smoky barbecue.
A young Hispanic girl in a white party dress
scrapes a stick along a cyclone fence. Suddenly,
a gust of wind...