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Quote by Jane Hirshfield

“In my poems though, as you say, the comic arrived fairly late. This doubtless has something to do with growing older. A person who's seen a bit of the world can't help but notice how foolish is the self-centeredness we bring to our tiny slice of existence.”

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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“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.”

World Way Mean Real Feelings Turns Stuff Loses Simple Compassion Awareness Greed Tricks Useless Absurdity Spirited Mean Spirited Real Feelings Midas Useless Stuff

Author:Jane Hirshfield

“Good poems ask us to have complex minds and hearts. Even simple-of-surface poems want that. Perhaps those are the ones that want it most of all, since that's where they do their work: in the unspoken complexities, understood off the page.”

Want Mind Heart Asks Simple Pages Understood Complexes Surface Complexity Heart And Mind Unspoken

Author:Jane Hirshfield

“Isn't the small and common the field we live our life in? The large comes into a life through small-paned windows. A breath is small, but everything depends on it. A person looks at you a single, brief moment longer than is necessary, and everything is changed. The smaller the clue, the larger the meaning, it sometimes feels.”

Feels Looks Persons Sometimes Moments Common Our Lives Fields Changed Depends Window Breaths Clue Brief Moments

Author:Jane Hirshfield

“Any artist, in any field, wants to press deeper, to discover further. Image and sound play are among the strongest colors available to poetry's palette. For a long time, I've wanted to invite in more strangeness, more freedom of imagination. Yet music, seeing, and meaning are also cohering disciplines. They can be stretched, and that is part of poetry's helium pleasure. But not to the point of breaking.”

Want Long Play Wanted Artist Sound Imagination Pleasure Seeing Fields Color Discipline Long Time Presses Available Deeper Strongest Invites Strangeness Palette Helium

Author:Jane Hirshfield

“Poems' deep work is a matter of language, but also a matter of life. One part of that work is to draw into our awareness and into language itself the unobvious and the unexpected.”

Matter Language Awareness Draws Unexpected

Author:Jane Hirshfield

“Poems offer us counter-knowledges. They let us see what is invisible to ordinary looking, and to find in overlooked corners the opulence of our actual lives. Similarly, we usually spend our waking hours trying to be sure of things - of our decisions, our ideas, our choices. We so want to be right. But we walk by right foot and left foot.”

Want Trying Ideas Choices Left Hours Decision Walks Feet Offers Ordinary Corners Invisible Waking Overlooked Our Choices Opulence Actual Life

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.”

Ifs Way Giving Looks Kind Long Problem Eye Individual Existence Known Accepting Fate Work Out Complexity Division Permission Navigate Multiplicity Unsure Open Eyes Actual Life

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.”

Thinking Wells Helping Creativity Creative Clear Possibility Metaphor Joyous Inventing

Author:Jane Hirshfield

“Silence is our enemy, and sound is our weapon.”

Sound Silence Enemy Weapons Silence Is

Author:Janelle Monae

“The colors black and white are my uniform, to honor the working class. People like my parents, who were janitors and had to wear a uniform every day. It keeps me grounded.”

People Parent Black White Class Color Honor Black And White Uniforms Working Class Grounded Janitor Color Black

Author:Janelle Monae