Edward Hirsch

Edward Hirsch (born January 20, 1950), an American poet and critic.

Edward Hirsch

Quotes

• The line is a way of thinking in poetry, by poetry..it paces the poem.
  • 'Five points' vol 4 no 2 Georgia State University Press Winter 2000

• These ruinous days of Autumn.At dusk,
  the brightness seeps through the crumbling air,
  at dusk the air gathers up the brightness
  • 'The Renunciation of Poetry'

• I was never able to pray
  but let me inscribe my name
  in the book of waves.
  • 'I was never able to pray'

How to Read a Poem And Fall in Love with Poetry (1998)

• Poetry is a voicing, a calling forth, words waiting to be vocalized.

• Inspiration is inbreathing, indwelling, poetry can never be entirely willed. It may be true a poet is given only a single line but that line is a gift from the unconscious, intution , a perception.

• There is no true poetry unconcious inspiration.

• For most of history poetry has been an oral art, it retains the vestiges of orality, an experience embedded in the sensuality of sounds.

• The poem is an original and unique creation, but it is reading and recitation: participation.

• The poet creates it; the people by recitation recreate it. Poet and reader (hearer) are moments of the same reality.

• The poem is an act beyond paraphrase because what is being said is always inseparable from the way it is being said.

• Poetry is a form of necessary speech.

Quotes about Hirsch

• Hirsch's poems are compassionate , reverential , sometimes relievingly ruthless.
  • Review-'Los Angeles Times Book Review' by Dana Goodyear

External link

• Examples of Hirsch poems
• Extract links Hirsch's 'Poets Glossary'