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Quote by Jane Hirshfield

“I need more and more silence, it feels. Poems don't leap into my mind when I'm distracted, turned outward, with other people, listening to music.”

Quote by Jane Hirshfield

Author

Jane Hirshfield

Jane Hirshfield is an American poet known for her concise and profound poetry. Born on February 24, 1953, she has gained widespread recognition in the literary world since the 1980s. more

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“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.”

Ifs World Long Grows Silence Long Time Hunger Forests

Author:Jane Hirshfield

“I don't have a cell phone (though for years I've kept saying, "soon").”

Years Phones Cells Cell Phone

Author:Jane Hirshfield

“Every other year or so I go to one of those great generous places, the artist retreats. Some of the poems in The Beauty were written at the MacDowell Colony, in New Hampshire, and others at Civitella Ranieri, in Umbria.”

Years Artist Written Generous Retreat Colony Hampshire New Hampshire Umbria

Author:Jane Hirshfield

“I've gone to Yaddo many times, I've worked at the Rockefeller Foundation's Center for Scholars and Artists in Bellagio. That these are places of beauty and of changed landscape is helpful - but far more important for me is that they offer what I feel as a monastic luxury: undisturbed time.”

Feels Important Artist Gone Changed Offers Foundation Luxury Landscape Helpful Scholar

Author:Jane Hirshfield

“Touch seems to be as essential as sunlight.”

Love Seems Essentials Sunlight

Book:A Natural History of the Senses

Source: A Natural History of the Senses

“I used to watch 'Top of the Pops' when I was a kid and say 'Yeah!' or 'Boo!' at every single song. So there was nothing in the middle. You brutally put it on one side or another.”

Kids Used Song Sides Watches Middle Yeah Pops

Author:Damien Hirst

“Within the silence, expansion, and sustained day by day concentration, I grow permeable.”

Grows Silence Concentration Expansion

Author:Jane Hirshfield

“An ordinary hole beside a path through the woods might begin to open to altered worlds.”

World Might Path Ordinary Woods Holes Altered

Author:Jane Hirshfield

“I travel as much as I do. It isn't the life I expected. I don't know what dust of pollen will come back with me from these travels.But I must trust that I will not treat frivolously the glimpses I've been given into other places and others' lives.”

Knows Given Treats Expected Dust Glimpse Pollen

Author:Jane Hirshfield

“The first poem in The Beauty holds a woman in Portugal in a wheelchair singing, with great power, a fado. I have never seen this or heard of it, the image simply arrived. But surely such a thing has happened. And it matters to me that it has, or could.”

Firsts Matter Happened Heard Singing Great Power Portugal Wheelchairs

Author:Jane Hirshfield