“I want to understand the piers of language and music and comprehension that can hold up a building even when what the building houses is an earthquake. This thinking must surely come into the poems I write, but more by osmosis than will.” ThinkingWantWritingHouseLanguageBuildingComprehensionEarthquakesPiersOsmosisBuilding Houses Author:Jane Hirshfield
“Go back to The October Palace, which came out in 1994, and there are poems with windows, doors, the rooms of the gorgeous and vanishing palace that is this ordinary world and ordinary life. Jungian archetype would say the house is a figure for the experienced, experiencing self.” WorldSelfHouseRoomsDoorsFiguresOrdinaryWindowGorgeousPalacesOctoberOrdinary LifeArchetypeVanishingOrdinary World Author:Jane Hirshfield
“Houses are fundamental metaphors for self, world, permeability, transition, interiority, exteriority, multiplicity, and the power to move from one state of being to another.” WorldSelfStatesMovingHouseFundamentalsMetaphorTransitionMultiplicity Author:Jane Hirshfield
“One recurring dream, many others have also: you go into a familiar house, discover a door or hallway, and find the house continues into hidden rooms. Sometimes a whole second house is there, a larger and unknown extension of the familiar dwelling.” SometimesWholeDreamHouseRoomsDoorsFamiliarExtensionsDwellingHallwaysRecurringRecurring Dreams Author:Jane Hirshfield
“Tree It is foolish to let a young redwood grow next to a house. Even in this one lifetime, you will have to choose. That great calm being, this clutter of soup pots and books-- Already the first branch-tips brush at the window. Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.” FirstsBookYoungNextHouseGrowsTreeWindowLifetimeCalmFoolishBranchesPotBrushesSoupClutterImmensityRedwoods Author:Jane Hirshfield
“In the dream life you don't deliberately set out to dream about a house night after night; the dream itself insists you look at whatever is trying to come into visibility.” TryingLooksDreamNightHouseVisibility Author:Jane Hirshfield
