“Metaphors think with the imagination and the senses. The hot chili peppers in them explode in the mouth and the mind.” ThinkingMindImaginationMouthsHotMetaphorSensesPeppersChiliChili Peppers Author:Jane Hirshfield
“Here are poems from a new generation of writers who honor the magnetic fields of the real; who feel and think with full and open-eyed passion; who focus heat as the magnifying glass focuses sun: until the paper catches. Read them.” ThinkingFeelsRealPassionSunFocusGenerationsFieldsHonorPaperGlassesHeatNew GenerationMagneticMagnifyingMagnifying GlassMagnetic Fields Author:Jane Hirshfield
“Creativity itself is a joyous unlatching. The act of creative imagining, inventing, saying differently, crafting a metaphor or image, then crafting another metaphor or image when you go further or when you revise - all these take whatever you think "is" and make clear that other possibilities exist as well. The sense of possibility, the amplitude and freedom that sense of malleability brings - for me, that cannot help but be joyous.” ThinkingWellsHelpingCreativityCreativeClearPossibilityMetaphorJoyousInventing Author:Jane Hirshfield
“Immensity is always there, but we so often become numb to it, or deceive ourselves into thinking our own lives and selves are what's large. Step into the ocean or walk on Mount Tamalpais, and that kind of amnesia and self-centeredness isn't possible. Enter the natural world at all, you see existence emerge, ripen, fall and continue, and you can't help but feel more tender towards self and others. That summoning into the large and the shared is what poems exist also to do.” ThinkingWorldFeelsKindSelfHelpingFallNaturalWalksExistenceStepsOceanDeceivingNatural WorldNumbAmnesiaImmensitySelf CenterednessCenterednessSummoning Author:Jane Hirshfield
“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
“I think, though, that perspective-awareness may follow from a kind of speaking that also came into my work more recently - the "assay" poems (some labeled that, some not) that engage an abstraction or object from multiple angles.” ThinkingKindMayAwarenessObjectsPerspectiveMultipleAngleAbstraction Author:Jane Hirshfield
“I once was asked to contribute to a mushroom poem anthology. I didn't have anything, and so instead ended up writing the introduction. I think that request made me more alert to mushrooms, and now they've cropped up in my work, the way mushrooms themselves do after rain, quite a lot. But I've only just now taken up mushroom hunting, after going to a class offered at my local library.” ThinkingWayWritingMadeClassTakenRainLibraryLocalsHuntingIntroductionRequestMushroomsAnthology Author:Jane Hirshfield
