“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.” AgeSpiritualPassionTermFantasyMiddleSubjectsHonestPoetConceptsEuropeIdealsPassionateNobleExtrasMiddle AgesMedievalAmourWildfiresMasochisticTroubadoursFantasy LoveHonest Love Author:Edward Hirsch
“The poet wants justice. And the poet wants art. In poetry we can't have one without the other.” WantArtJusticePoet Author:Edward Hirsch
“There has never been a great poet who wasn't also a great reader of poetry.” PoetReaderGreat Poet 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.” WritingTryingFeelingsPassionCreativityPoetConvincedEnthusiasmPoetry IsCarols 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.” SometimesStudentsPoetReaderGreat PoetDistressing 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.” WayFirstsHas BeensMightReadingImpossiblePoetReaderGuidesCraftsPoetry IsOddsGreat Poet 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.” WayNeedsWritingBookTurnsPoetCallingSixModelsRecognitionGuidanceEpicUnderworldInfernoAeneas 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.” FirstsBookUseWalksAlivePoetModelsApprentice 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.” KindSidesWalksImaginePoetWalkingDramaWestParisNeighborhoodManhattanApprenticeshipWest SideLorcaPeruvians 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.” HelpingReadingFoundLiteraturePathPoetAmountModelsHelp MeLatinEasternPolishLatin AmericaProvincesAmerican LiteratureLatin American 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.” PersonsBookClassPoetLondonComing OutPearls Author:Edward Hirsch
“I would say there are different kinds of poems. There are things that poets in the history of poetry hit upon when they're very young that can never be outdone and it's a remarkable, strange experience when you think of say Arthur Rimbaud who write poetry between the ages of 17 and 21 whose career was over by the time he was 22.” ThinkingWritingKindDifferentAgeYoungCareersStrangePoetRemarkablePoetry IsDifferent KindsArthur Author:Edward Hirsch
“There's the brilliant audacity of youth that poets strike upon in their earliest work sometimes that they never can hit upon again.” SometimesYouthPoetStrikesBrilliantAudacity Author:Edward Hirsch
“And sometimes you look at the first poems by someone and you go, "They have freshness and a sense of wonder that is never recaptured again by that poet."” FirstsLooksSometimesWonderPoetFreshnessSense Of Wonder Author:Edward Hirsch
“So, the process of revision, it's not systematic. But for me, I mean, I know a lot of poets who write out a draft and then revise it and I think they're happier people. But, I'm just not able to do it that way. I need to just continually examine it as I do it.” PeopleThinkingKnowsWayNeedsWritingMeanAbleProcessPoetSystematicRevision Author:Edward Hirsch
“I think that the dark side of MFA programs is that they're generating more poets than the culture can absorb and there are more people writing poetry than possibly read it or can certainly earn a living around it.” PeopleThinkingWritingCultureSidesDarkPoetProgramDark SideWriting Poetry Author:Edward Hirsch
“A stress on the system and I think a painful thing for many young poets who are looking to find a life in poetry that they're not going to be able to find.” ThinkingAbleYoungPoetStressPainfulPainful Things Author:Edward Hirsch
“I mean, in the history of poetry there have been a lot poetries where you have to inherit the position of poet from your ancestors and I think that if you just leave anyone to become a poet based on an aristocratic society, then a lot of people are left out who might have something to offer.” PeopleIfsThinkingMeanHas BeensMightLeftPositionPoetOffersAncestorLeft OutAristocratic Author:Edward Hirsch
“I think in terms of educating a group of readers, MFA programs are very good. I just think the model of MFA programs in which a young poet goes through the program, publishes a series of books, gets teaching jobs, that's a bit at risk.” ThinkingBookJobsYoungBitsTermRiskGroupsTeachingPoetReaderModelsProgramSeriesVery GoodPublish Author:Edward Hirsch
“I would keep in mind to a young poet that you are entering into something that is very important, that has always been important in terms of human concerns.” MindHumansImportantYoungTermPoetConcernEntering Author:Edward Hirsch
“The way to become a poet is to read poetry and to imitate what you read and to read passionately and widely and in as involved a way as you can.” WayPoetInvolved Author:Edward Hirsch
“I think that as long as you have other poets before you and that you can learn from them, then it's always open ended for you.” ThinkingLongPoet Author:Edward Hirsch
“Emily Dickinson calls previous poets her kinsmen of the shelf. You can always be consoled by your kinsmen of the shelf and you can participate in poetry by going to them and by trying to make something worthy of them.” TryingPoetWorthyShelvesEmily Author:Edward Hirsch
“The idea of how to read a poem is based on the idea that poetry needs you as a reader. That the experience of poetry, the meaning in poetry is a kind of circuit that takes place between a poet, a poem and a reader and that meaning doesn't exist or in here in poems alone.” NeedsKindIdeasPoetReaderPoetry IsNeed YouCircuits Author:Edward Hirsch
“Readers bring their own experiences, their own range of - their own wisdom, their own knowledge, their own insights to poem and the meaning of a poem takes place in the negotiation between the poet, the poem and the reader.” PoetReaderInsightRangeNegotiation Author:Edward Hirsch
“The great post-Holocaust poet, Paul Celan, said that a poem is a message in a bottle sent out in the not always greatly hopeful belief that somewhere and some time it would wash up on land on heartland perhaps.” SaidBeliefLandPoetMessagesPostsHopefulBottlesHolocaustMessage In A Bottle Author:Edward Hirsch
“And Mandelstam says a poet - you go down to the shore and you see an unlikely looking from a bottle from the past, you open it. Mandelstam says, "It's okay to do so. I'm not reading someone else's mail. It was addressed to whoever found it. I found it, therefore it's addressed to me."” PastReadingFoundPoetOkayBottlesShoreMailUnlikely Author:Edward Hirsch
“My focus is on the reader and that the poet's job is not to inspire himself or herself. The poet's job is to inspire some future reader. And so, as a reader you have a task to do in finding those bottles and opening up the messages and experiencing what's in them inside of yourself.” JobsFocusInspirePoetReaderFindingsMessagesTasksOpeningBottlesOpening Up Author:Edward Hirsch
“In American tradition a certain kind of, I would say, desperate American friendliness in which the poet tries to reach out through the page to make a connection by the side of the road with some other person.” TryingKindPersonsCertainSidesPoetPagesTraditionConnectionsDesperateReach OutFriendlinessAmerican Tradition Author:Edward Hirsch
“Ultimately you're trying to reach across and find some other person, some other human warmth. But it is, especially in written poetry, it is inscribed in a text and the text can't do that work by itself and you as a poet can only do your best.” TryingHumansPersonsWrittenPoetWarmth Author:Edward Hirsch
“When I taught at the University of Houston in the Creative Writing program we required the poets to take workshops in fiction writing and we required the fiction writers to take workshops in poetry. And the reason for that is because the fiction writers seemed to need to learn how to pay greater attention to language itself, to the way that language works.” WayNeedsWritingReasonLanguagePayAttentionFictionCreativeGreaterTaughtPoetProgramUniversityCreative WritingWorkshopsFiction WritingFiction WritersHouston Author:Edward Hirsch
“The poets needed to learn to pay greater attention to character and to narrative.” CharacterPayAttentionGreaterPoetNeededNarrative Author:Edward Hirsch
“That is many poets don't know how to tell a story and they don't have a sense of how to put things in order to tell a story and we thought the poets could learn from fiction writers something about developing a character over time who wasn't just you and also creating a narrative structure.” KnowsCharacterStoriesOrderFictionKnow HowPoetCreatingStructureDevelopingNarrativeFiction WritersNarrative Structure Author:Edward Hirsch
“We're trying to make something that lasts in language and there's no question that many fiction writers began as poets and it's hard for me to think of any good fiction writers who don't also read poetry.” ThinkingTryingHardLastsLanguageFictionPoetFiction Writers Author:Edward Hirsch
“In Náhuatl, the language of the Aztec world, one key word for poet was 'tlamatine,' meaning 'the one who knows,' or 'he who knows something.' Poets were considered 'sages of the word,' who meditated on human enigmas and explored the beyond, the realm of the gods.” KnowsWorldHumansLanguagePoetKeysRealmsSageEnigmaAztec Author:Edward Hirsch
