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Quote by Edward Hirsch

“As a reader you have a task to do, you have something to do. You bring your experience to it. It's not all inherit in the poem.”

Quote by Edward Hirsch

Author

Edward Hirsch is an American poet renowned for his profound emotion and rich imagination. His works often explore themes of personal identity, history, and memory, earning him the admiration of readers and critics alike. more

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“The great post-Holocaust poet, Paul Celan, said that a poem is a message in a bottle sent out in the not always greatly hopeful belief that somewhere and some time it would wash up on land on heartland perhaps.”

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Author:Edward Hirsch

“The idea of a poem as a message in a bottle means that it's sent out towards some future reader and the reader who opens that bottle becomes the addressee of the literary text.”

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Author:Edward Hirsch

“And Mandelstam says a poet - you go down to the shore and you see an unlikely looking from a bottle from the past, you open it. Mandelstam says, "It's okay to do so. I'm not reading someone else's mail. It was addressed to whoever found it. I found it, therefore it's addressed to me."”

Past Reading Found Poet Okay Bottles Shore Mail Unlikely

Author:Edward Hirsch

“When you find it you become the secret addressee of a literary text and I felt that their reader had been left out of this experience of reading poetry or what the experience of poetry was.”

Reading Left Felt Secret Reader Left Out Reading Poetry

Author:Edward Hirsch

“My focus is on the reader and that the poet's job is not to inspire himself or herself. The poet's job is to inspire some future reader. And so, as a reader you have a task to do in finding those bottles and opening up the messages and experiencing what's in them inside of yourself.”

Jobs Focus Inspire Poet Reader Findings Messages Tasks Opening Bottles Opening Up

Author:Edward Hirsch

“I think that's a connection that you can only hope for. It's not something that you can make because it needs someone else.”

Thinking Needs Connections

Author:Edward Hirsch

“In American tradition a certain kind of, I would say, desperate American friendliness in which the poet tries to reach out through the page to make a connection by the side of the road with some other person.”

Trying Kind Persons Certain Sides Poet Pages Tradition Connections Desperate Reach Out Friendliness American Tradition

Author:Edward Hirsch

“You can seek clarity, you can seek warmth, you can try to make something for lasting. You can pack something in salt so that it's well made and you can hope that it outlasts time. But, ultimately that's not up to you.”

Trying Wells Made Clarity Lasting Warmth Salt Packs Up To You

Author:Edward Hirsch

“There are very few things that are purely conceptual without any hard content.”

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“Ultimately you're trying to reach across and find some other person, some other human warmth. But it is, especially in written poetry, it is inscribed in a text and the text can't do that work by itself and you as a poet can only do your best.”

Trying Humans Persons Written Poet Warmth

Author:Edward Hirsch