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Quote by Edward Hirsch

“Emily Dickinson calls previous poets her kinsmen of the shelf. You can always be consoled by your kinsmen of the shelf and you can participate in poetry by going to them and by trying to make something worthy of them.”

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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“Gertrude Stein said, "I write for myself and strangers." I would say I write for myself, strangers and the great dead.”

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Author:Edward Hirsch

“I don't think you can read poetry while you're watching television very well.”

Thinking Wells Television Watching Television

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“The idea of how to read a poem is based on the idea that poetry needs you as a reader. That the experience of poetry, the meaning in poetry is a kind of circuit that takes place between a poet, a poem and a reader and that meaning doesn't exist or in here in poems alone.”

Needs Kind Ideas Poet Reader Poetry Is Need You Circuits

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“Readers bring their own experiences, their own range of - their own wisdom, their own knowledge, their own insights to poem and the meaning of a poem takes place in the negotiation between the poet, the poem and the reader.”

Poet Reader Insight Range Negotiation

Author: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.”

Author:Edward Hirsch

“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.”

Said Belief Land Poet Messages Posts Hopeful Bottles Holocaust Message In A Bottle

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.”

Mean Ideas Reader Messages Bottles Message In A Bottle

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