There's never been a culture without poetry in the history of the world. — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
I think it's one of the things that drive lyric poetry, our sense of mortality. — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
I like the machinery of poems, especially when they have human warmth. — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
Poets have always celebrated grief as one of the deepest human emotions. — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
A certain kind of poetry looks back at experience from an older perspective. — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
I don't think poetry will die, but I think that poetry does demand a certain kind of attention to language. — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
There's the brilliant audacity of youth that poets strike upon in their earliest work sometimes that they never can hit upon again. — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
I started writing poetry as a teenager in suburban Chicago out of emotional desperation. — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
A stress on the system and I think a painful thing for many young poets who are looking to find a life… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
I guess that would have been 1968. I was a freshman in college and I wasn't writing good poems, but I was… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
Poems mesmerized me, and I felt better when I was writing them, or trying to - more in touch with something deep… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
Now, the process of writing poetry is very messy. Not systematic, never quite the same — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
The way to become a poet is to read poetry and to imitate what you read and to read passionately and widely… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
And a lot of poetry is putting yourself back into the state of wonder that you have before things when you're a… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
When I taught at the University of Houston in the Creative Writing program, we required the poets to take workshops in fiction… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
I didn't read poetry seriously until college, when I really began to devour it in a very intense way. I also discovered… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
Poetry is meant to inspire readers and listeners, to connect them more deeply to themselves even as it links them more fully… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
We're trying to make something that lasts in language and there's no question that many fiction writers began as poets and it's… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
I think poetry will survive and I don't think it will be the end of poetry. Our tremendous onslaught of mass media… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
Poetry never loses its appeal. Sometimes its audience wanes and sometimes it swells like a wave. But the essential mystery of being… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
I find great consolation in having a lot of poetry books around. I believe that writing poetry and reading it are deeply… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
In the Middle Ages, the troubadour poets invented the concept of courtly love--a fantasy love, a noble passion, which was also extra-marital… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
One of the deep fundamentals of poetry is the recurrence of sounds, syllables, words, phrases, lines, and stanzas. Repetition can be one… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
When I taught at the University of Houston in the Creative Writing program we required the poets to take workshops in fiction… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
Read poems to yourself in the middle of the night. Turn on a single lamp and read them while you're alone in… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
I was once doing a question and answer period with the novelist Jane Smiley in a bookstore and someone asked us what… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
I didn't ever consider poetry the province exclusively of English and American literature and I discovered a great amount in reading Polish… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
In a way, that's also a recognition that Dante needs Virgil and that the Inferno needs the Aeneid and that the epic… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
I didn't sit down then and start writing poems, but it was in the back of my mind. — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
Poetry itself hasn't been well served by poets who fled to the margins. — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
Poetry takes place in time. It is a durational. Things take place in sequence. — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
The poets needed to learn to pay greater attention to character and to narrative. — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
The sense of flowing, which is so crucial to song, is also crucial to poetry. — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
I think fiction goes to poetry for the intensity of its use of language. — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
And my experience is the best titles, for me, emerge in the process of writing. They don't usually come at the very beginning and… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share
“I did not know the work of mourning Is like carrying a bag of cement Up a mountain at night The mountaintop is not… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share
“Fall" Fall, falling, fallen. That’s the way the season Changes its tense in the long-haired maples That dot the road; the veiny hand-shaped leaves… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share
I find great consolation in having a lot of poetry books around. I believe that writing poetry and reading it are deeply intertwined. I've… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share
I had feelings that I didn't know what to do with, and I felt better when I started writing them. I thought of it… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share
I think in terms of educating a group of readers, MFA programs are very good. I just think the model of MFA programs in… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share
“Jonson wrote a poem and called his son His best piece of poetrie A lovely line a little loathsome I loved that poem once… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share
After my grandfather died I went down to the basement of my family house where my family kept books, anthologies and things and there… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share
It does demand a certain space in order to read it and I think that space is somewhat threatened by the lack of attention… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share
...I put down these memorandums of my affections in honor of tenderness, in honor of all of those who have been conscripted into the… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share
You're shadowed by your own dream, especially as you get older, of trying to create something that will last in poetry. And so, you're… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share
The attention deficit disorder of the culture is very distressing in America now and I think it puts a lot of things at risk,… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share
Now, as I've gotten older I've been able to write more quickly. Sometimes I get in the space of something and I can do… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share
Poetry takes courage because you have to face things and you try to articulate how you feel. — Edward Hirsch Copy Share
