“A person is full of sorrow the way a burlap sack is full of stones or sand.” WayPersonsSorrowStonesSandBurlap Author:Jane Hirshfield
“The trick, though, is to not lose compassion, to not allow the sense of absurdity to outweigh the awareness of real beings, with real feelings. Mean-spirited humor turns the world into cardboard, the way Midas's simple-minded greed turned food into inedible and useless stuff.” WorldWayMeanRealFeelingsTurnsStuffLosesSimpleCompassionAwarenessGreedTricksUselessAbsurditySpiritedMean SpiritedReal FeelingsMidasUseless Stuff Author:Jane Hirshfield
“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
“The secret of understanding poetry is to hear poetry's words as what they are: the full self's most intimate speech, half waking, half dream. You listen to a poem as you might listen to someone you love who tells you their truest day. Their words might weep, joke, whirl, leap. What's unspoken in the words will still be heard. It's also the way we listen to music: You don't look for extractable meaning, but to be moved.” WayLooksStillsSelfDreamMightUnderstandingSecretHalfHeardSpeechJokesMovedIntimatePoetry IsLeapWakingListening To MusicTruestUnspokenOne You LoveSomeone You Love Author:Jane Hirshfield
“I require silence to write the way an apple tree requires winter to make fruit. Being with people is intimate and joyous, but at some point, I'll wander off by myself. The paradox is that what began in childhood as an act of necessary solitude has led me straight to a life with others, in which I fly to China or Lithuania or northern Minnesota to read my poems and talk with other people who love language made into a lathe on which a life can be tuned and be turned.” PeopleWayWritingMadeLanguageSilenceTreeChildhoodSolitudeFruitWinterChinaWanderIntimateApplesParadoxJoyousMinnesotaApple TreesLithuania Author:Jane Hirshfield
“Poems are always interested in what Ivan Illich called 'shadow work,' not least because that is no small part of their own way of working.” WayShadowSmall PartsShadow Work Author:Jane Hirshfield
“The writing of an assay-type poem or a poem investigating perspective isn't an exercise of rational or strategic mind. Poems for me are acts of small or large desperation. They grapple with surfaces too steep to walk in any other way, yet which have to be traveled.” WayWritingMindWalksPerspectiveTypeExerciseSurfaceRationalTraveledDesperationStrategicSteepInvestigating 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
“I thought I would love you forever—and, a little, I may, in the way I still move toward a crate, knees bent, or reach for a man: as one might stretch for the three or four fruit that lie in the sun at the top of the tree; too ripe for any moment but this, they open their skin at first touch, yielding sweetness, sweetness and heat, and in me, each time since, the answering yes.” MenWayFirstsMayLittlesStillsMomentsMightMovingLyingThreeSunForeverFourTreeLove YouSkinsFruitKneesHeatBentSweetnessRipeLove You Forever Author:Jane Hirshfield
“One way poetry connects is across time. . . . Some echo of a writer's physical experience comes into us when we read her poem.” WayOne WayEchoes Author:Jane Hirshfield
