“Poems give us permission to be unsure, in ways we must be if we are ever to learn anything not already known. If you look with open eyes at your actual life, it's always going to be the kind of long division problem that doesn't work out perfectly evenly. Poems let you accept the multiplicity and complexity of the actual, they let us navigate the unnavigable, insoluble parts of our individual fates and shared existence.” IfsWayGivingLooksKindLongProblemEyeIndividualExistenceKnownAcceptingFateWork OutComplexityDivisionPermissionNavigateMultiplicityUnsureOpen EyesActual Life Author:Jane Hirshfield
“A poem makes clear without making simple. Poetry's language carries what lives outside language. It's as if you were given a 5-gallon bucket with 10 gallons of water in it. Mysterious thirsts are answered. That alchemical bucket carries secrets also, even the ones we keep from ourselves.” IfsLanguageGivenWaterSimpleSecretClearMysteriousCarrieThirstBucketsGallons Author:Jane Hirshfield
“It's more for me as with going into a forest: if you sit quietly for a long time, the life around you emerges. As the world grows ever more clamorous, my hunger for silence steepens. I unplug the landline.” IfsWorldLongGrowsSilenceLong TimeHungerForests Author:Jane Hirshfield
“A tree lives on its roots. If you change the root, you change the tree. Culture lives in human beings. If you change the human heart the culture will follow.” IfsHumansHeartCultureHuman BeingsTreeRootsHuman HeartTree Of Life Author:Jane Hirshfield
“If truth is the lure, humans are fishes.” IfsHumansTruthTruth IsFishesLure Book:Come, Thief: Poems Source: Come, Thief: Poems
“At some point I realized that you don't get a full human life if you try to cut off one end of it, that you need to agree to the entire experience, to the full spectrum of what happens.” IfsNeedsTryingHumansEndsHappensCuttingAgreeI RealizedHuman LifeSpectrum Author:Jane Hirshfield
“Existence itself is nothing if not an amazement. Good poems restore amazement.” IfsExistenceAmazement Author:Jane Hirshfield
