Northern Portrait

Hildebrand’s poems are a joyous journey through small-town Wisconsin with an homage to drive-in theaters, pinewood derbies, and Saturday night baseball. With the deftness of a poet, this author takes readers there with intimate detail and his sure sense of belonging. There is a softness in these poems, a feeling that passing time hovers just around the corner. Karla Huston, Wisconsin Poet Laureate 2017-2018

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 / the light of an uncertain candle. More, Hildebrand knows what he sees means, that when you see the blackbird, it is about not exactly the bird / but the cleansing / rains and green maple / days that followed her. It is in such an understanding that these poems live.

Tom Montag

Northern Portrait shines a light on the past, on small-town America in all of its former glory-taverns, diners, Memorial Day parades-while also making room for broken windows and roofless silos, the silence of empty fields, and shuttered storefronts. The poems make up a map. It is creased along the folds, like a favorite route marked in ink, studded with stories told in the old language. We read about the land, what has been lost, and what lingers. We travel over the miles of memories of those who have lived through its changes.

Matthew Nienow