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Edward Hirsch

Edward Hirsch Quotes

Poet

Edward Hirsch is an American poet renowned for his profound emotion and rich imagination. His works often explore themes of personal identity, history, and memory, earning him the admiration of readers and critics alike.

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All Thinking Poet Writing Poetry Is Trying Needs Reader Way Kind People

Famous Edward Hirsch Quotes

“I did not know the work of mourning Is like carrying a bag of cement Up a mountain at night The mountaintop is not in sight Because there is no mountaintop Poor Sisyphus grief I did not know I would struggle Through a ragged underbrush Without an upward path ... Look closely and you will see Almost everyone carrying bags Of cement on their shoulders That’s why it takes courage To get out of bed in the morning And climb into the day.”

Life Grief Courage Weight Mourning

Book:Gabriel: A Poem

Source: Gabriel: A Poem

“If you had told me, though, when I was twenty-four that I would write about Skokie, Illinois, where I grew up, I would have said, ‘You’re out of your mind. Why would I have Skokie in a poem?’ But you become resigned. Your job is to write about the life you actually have.”

Life Writing Reality Poetry Poems Writers Skokie

Author:Edward Hirsch

“Words floating in air, lines cut on a page, stanzas carved into units. Poetry is a mode of associative thinking that takes a different route to knowledge than philosophy, its ancient antagonist. It follows its own wayward but resolute path.”

Thinking Poetry Words Meaning Associations

Book:Best American Poetry 2016

Source: Best American Poetry 2016

“Cafeteria-style education, combined with the unwillingness of our schools to place demands on students, has resulted in a steady diminishment of commonly shared information between generations and between young people themselves.”

People School Young Education Generations Style Information Students Demand Steady Self Education Cafeteria

Author:Edward Hirsch

“Books and newspapers assume a "common reader" that is, a person who knows the things known by other literate persons in the culture. Obviously, such assumptions are never identical from writer to writer, but they show a remarkable consistency”

Knows Persons Book Shows Culture Common Known Knowledge Reader Assuming Newspapers Assumption Remarkable Consistency Identical

Author:Edward Hirsch

“In the Middle Ages, the troubadour poets invented the concept of courtly love--a fantasy love, a noble passion, which was also extra-marital and thus inevitably thwarted, illicit, adulterous. One of the medieval terms for it was amour honestus (honest love). I've always wondered why this passionate ideal--masochistic, spiritual-travelled with such wildfire throughout Europe. My poem, a ghazal, takes up the subject.”

“Poetry never loses its appeal. Sometimes its audience wanes and sometimes it swells like a wave. But the essential mystery of being human is always going to engage and compel us. We're involved in a mystery. Poetry uses words to put us in touch with that mystery. We're always going to need it.”

Needs Humans Sometimes Use Poetry Loses Audience Mystery Involved Essentials Wave Appeals Being Human

Author:Edward Hirsch

“The poet wants justice. And the poet wants art. In poetry we can't have one without the other.”

Want Art Justice Poet

Author:Edward Hirsch

“There has never been a great poet who wasn't also a great reader of poetry.”

Poet Reader Great Poet

Author:Edward Hirsch

“The spiritual desire for poetry can be overwhelming, so much do I need it to experience and name my own perilous depths and vast spaces, my own well-being.”

Needs Wells Spiritual Desire Names My Own Space Depth Well Being Overwhelming

Book:How to Read a Poem: And Fall in Love with Poetry

Source: How to Read a Poem: And Fall in Love with Poetry

“A poem is a hand, a hook, a prayer. It is a soul in action.”

Soul Hands Action Prayer Hook

Author:Edward Hirsch

“The imagination is an organ of understanding. And the imagination needs all the faculties at hand, all the sensibility, all the conscious and unconscious intelligence it can galvanize to fulfill its luminous mission.”

Needs Hands Understanding Imagination Conscious Missions Unconscious Faculty Organs Sensibility Luminous Conscious And Unconscious

Author:Edward Hirsch

“After my grandfather died I went down to the basement of my family house where my family kept books, anthologies and things and there was an anthology without any names attached to it and I read a poem called Spellbound and I somehow attached it to my grandfather's death and I thought my grandfather had written it.”

Book House Names Written My Family Died Grandfather My Grandfather Basements Anthology Father Died Grandfather Died

Author:Edward Hirsch

“I didn't sit down then and start writing poems, but it was in the back of my mind.”

Writing Mind Of My Mind Writing Poems

Author:Edward Hirsch

“In high school I was leafing through an anthology that our teachers had given up and I found a poem, I go, "That's so strange. This poem looks so much like my grandfather's poem."”

Looks School Found Given Teacher Strange High School Grandfather Given Up My Grandfather Anthology

Author:Edward Hirsch

“Then I found another one, grandpa's poem. It turned out it had been written by Emily Brontë and it wasn't my grandfather's poem at all, although my response to it, I think, was pretty much the same, I just had the author wrong.”

Thinking Found Written Response Grandfather My Grandfather Emily Grandpa

Author:Edward Hirsch

“But, that was the beginning, though I didn't start writing until I was in high school and when I was in high school I really began to write poetry with great energy and enthusiasm.”

Writing School Energy High School Enthusiasm Energy And Enthusiasm

Author:Edward Hirsch

“When I was a freshman in college I went to Grinnell College in Iowa. I brought my poems to my freshman humanities teacher whose name was Carol Parsinan, a wonderful teacher. And Carol did a really great thing for me. She taught me more than anyone.”

Humanity Names Teacher Wonderful Taught College Great Things Really Great Iowa Freshman Carols Wonderful Teacher

Author:Edward Hirsch

“She [Carol Parsinan] somehow read my poems and came back to me and convinced me that I could be a poet, that I had the passion and the enthusiasm and the creativity to become a poet, but that what I was writing was not poetry because I was just expressing my feelings and I wasn't try to make anything.”

Writing Trying Feelings Passion Creativity Poet Convinced Enthusiasm Poetry Is Carols

Author:Edward Hirsch

“I started then to try and shape something rather than just express it and when I started to shape something and to imitate other poems that were written by other people, when I had tried to integrate my reading and my writing I was on my path.”

People Writing Trying Reading Path Written Shapes Integrating

Author:Edward Hirsch

“I guess that would have been 1968. I was a freshman in college and I wasn't writing good poems, but I was at least trying to write poems then.”

Writing Trying Has Beens College Freshman

Author:Edward Hirsch

“There's been no poet, no great poet in the history of poetry who hasn't also been a great reader of poetry. This is sometimes distressing to my students when I tell them this.”

Sometimes Students Poet Reader Great Poet Distressing

Author:Edward Hirsch

“Now, I do say, "It's possible. You might be the first. I'm not saying it's impossible, but the odds are very much against you." All great poets have been great readers and the way to learn your craft in poetry is by reading other poetry and by letting it guide you.”

Way Firsts Has Beens Might Reading Impossible Poet Reader Guides Crafts Poetry Is Odds Great Poet

Author:Edward Hirsch

“A great model for this is the way that Dante calls on Virgil at the beginning of 'The Inferno,' 'The Divine Comedy,' to help guide him through the underworld.”

Way Helping Comedy Divine Models Guides Underworld Inferno Divine Comedy

Author:Edward Hirsch

“In a way, that's also a recognition that Dante needs Virgil and that the Inferno needs the Aeneid and that the epic needs a model and that for Dante to write this great poem he needs someone to come before him and he turns to Virgil's text, especially book six where Aeneas goes down into the underworld. And for me, that's a model of the poet's relationship to previous poetry, to another poetry as calling out for guidance.”

Way Needs Writing Book Turns Poet Calling Six Models Recognition Guidance Epic Underworld Inferno Aeneas

Author:Edward Hirsch

“There are many poets that use as my models. In my first book of poems, I had several for the "Sleepwalkers," I had several poems that were apprentice poems like this in which I take a walk with a poet who is no longer alive.”

Firsts Book Use Walks Alive Poet Models Apprentice

Author:Edward Hirsch

“I walk with Federico Garcia Lorca around the Upper West Side in Manhattan because that was a neighborhood he lived in and I imagine walking around Paris with Cesar Vallejo, a great Peruvian poet who lived in Paris. And I kind of create the walk as a kind of drama of my apprenticeship.”

Kind Sides Walks Imagine Poet Walking Drama West Paris Neighborhood Manhattan Apprenticeship West Side Lorca Peruvians

Author:Edward Hirsch

“I think one of the things that distinguished my work from the beginning when I was in college was my turning towards poetry from other countries.”

Thinking Country College Other Countries Distinguished

Author:Edward Hirsch

“I didn't ever consider poetry the province exclusively of English and American literature and I discovered a great amount in reading Polish poetry and other Eastern European poetry and reading Russian poetry and reading Latin American and Spanish poetry and I've always found models in those other poetries of poets who could help me on my path.”

Helping Reading Found Literature Path Poet Amount Models Help Me Latin Eastern Polish Latin America Provinces American Literature Latin American

Author:Edward Hirsch

“I think it shapes it in very deep ways that you don't entirely understand. Rainer Maria Rilke said there are two inexhaustible sources for poetry. One is dreams, and the other is childhood. I think childhood is an inexhaustible source of your becoming who you will be and certain deep feelings are set inside of you.”

Thinking Way Said Two Feelings Dream Certain Childhood Source Becoming Shapes Very Deep Deep Feeling

Author:Edward Hirsch

“A certain construct of emotions that really define who you are and who you will become and I feel very much that my childhood is very alive inside of me, very close to me, very much part of me. And it's a sometimes painful, sometimes joyous inexhaustible resource for poetry.”

Feels Sometimes Certain Emotion Alive Childhood Resources Who You Are Painful Constructs Joyous

Author:Edward Hirsch

“And a lot of poetry is putting yourself back into the state of wonder that you have before things when you're a child. It's not only a joyous wonder, it's sometimes a grief stricken wonder.”

Children Sometimes States Grief Wonder Poetry Is Joyous State Of Wonder

Author:Edward Hirsch

“I have the idea that lyric poetry is a poetry that's driven by a sense of the presence of death. That there's something unbearable about the fact that we're going to die and that we can't stand it and I think you find that out in childhood and you don't really - at least I found it out in childhood and I found it hard to get over.”

Thinking Ideas Hard Facts Dies Found Childhood Driven Poetry Is Get Over Unbearable Lyric Poetry

Author:Edward Hirsch

“I think it's one of the things that drive lyric poetry, our sense of mortality.”

Thinking Mortality Lyric Poetry

Author:Edward Hirsch

“Our sense that things are transient, that everything is passing and then if you want to save something from the endless flux of experience and the world's movement, you have to set down a stake and try and make something that will last.”

Ifs World Want Trying Lasts Movement Endless Passing Passings Stakes Transient Flux

Author:Edward Hirsch

“I mean, when I was young I could write all through the night and I loved to work late into the night. Now that I'm older I work really well in the early morning when your synapses are firing a little better. But I work at different times of the day.”

Writing Wells Mean Littles Different Young Night Morning Late Different Times Firing Early Morning Synapses

Author:Edward Hirsch

“I don't have a set schedule to work on poetry at any given time, at the same time every day, but I do try to work on poetry every day and I do find some time every day that I can with some exceptions to work on poetry.”

Trying I Can Given Exception Schedules

Author:Edward Hirsch

“But, the best times I have found, in my life, are late at night or early in the morning and I think it's because you're outside the social realm.”

Thinking Night Found Social Morning Late Realms Best Times

Author:Edward Hirsch

“You're alone with yourself and your own feelings and that gives you deeper access to what you need to get in touch with to write poetry.”

Needs Giving Writing Feelings Deeper Access

Author:Edward Hirsch

“Now, the process of writing poetry is very messy. Not systematic, never quite the same”

Writing Process Poetry Is Never Quit Messy Systematic Writing Poetry

Author:Edward Hirsch

“Sometimes I have a feeling that I just can't get rid of. Sometimes there's an experience that I want to write about that I have to get off my chest. Sometimes there are some words that appeal to you.”

Want Writing Sometimes Feelings Appeals Chests

Author:Edward Hirsch

“Often you've read another poem that you think is so beautiful that you'd like to make something like that. And so you try to make a sonnet that works in a certain kind of way, or you try to make something that's songlike, or you create a refrain, or you love the way a poem works in two line stanzas and you try to do that.”

Thinking Way Trying Kind Two Beautiful Certain Lines Sonnet Refrain

Author:Edward Hirsch

“And what I've found over time is that for me to write a poem that I think is worthy that I can live with, two things have to happen.”

Thinking Writing I Can Two Happens Found Worthy Two Things

Author:Edward Hirsch

“One, something emotional has to be at stake. There has to be something important for me that I'm writing about. And then two, I have to have a formal idea. Something has to be being worked out in poetry.”

Writing Two Important Ideas Emotional Stakes Formal

Author:Edward Hirsch

“Now, that can be a traditional form or it can be something you're inventing. It can be the development of a metaphor, the working through of a metaphor.”

Form Development Metaphor Traditional Inventing

Author:Edward Hirsch

“But, something has to be worked through formally as well as emotionally. Now, when those two things come together I've got something, I think, that I can be proud of.”

Thinking Wells I Can Two Together Proud Two Things Be Proud

Author:Edward Hirsch

“Sometimes the title comes to you at the beginning, sometimes it comes at the end. The very best way in my experience is when it comes in the middle.”

Way Ends Sometimes Middle Best Way Titles

Author:Edward Hirsch

“That you write a phrase or you think of something and it seems to have a deeper charge because the title has to be some kind of marker, something setting out a space, creating a space for what's going to come.”

Thinking Writing Kind Seems Space Creating Deeper Setting Settings Titles Phrases Markers

Author:Edward Hirsch

“And my experience is the best titles, for me, emerge in the process of writing. They don't usually come at the very beginning and hopefully they don't come at the very end because then it's getting late in the day.”

Writing Ends Process Late Hopefully Titles

Author:Edward Hirsch

“I was surprised recently to find a book called "Poetry in Persons" that's coming out about visit to poets to a class that Pearl London gave.”

Persons Book Class Poet London Coming Out Pearls

Author:Edward Hirsch

About the Author

Born: January 20, 1950
Known for: Poet
Quotes: 130

Related Topics

Thinking Poet Writing Poetry Is Trying Needs Reader Way Kind People

Popular Topics

People Ifs Thinking Knows Men World Way Want Love Life Inspirational Needs Giving Feels Should Writing Trying Years Mind Firsts

Books & Sources

How to Read a Poem: And Fall in Love with PoetryRelated source material

Gabriel: A PoemRelated source material

The Living FireRelated source material

A Poet's GlossaryRelated source material

Best American Poetry 2016Related source material

Lay Back the Darkness: PoemsRelated source material

Special Orders: PoemsRelated source material

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