Of Death. Minimal OdesHilda Hilst If life is no more than a prolonged flirtation with death, then Hilda Hilst's Of Death. Minimal Odes is the true account of a lifelong seduction. It is at once both a reverie and reliquary, as the poet imagines and reimagines that most paradoxical moment of disintegration the corporeal flesh fusing with death's own dark corpus. With a visceral mystical poetic voice that is as teasingly unrestrained as it is intellectually sublime, Hilst's