Edward Hirsch

Poetry itself hasn't been well served by poets who fled to the margins.

— Edward Hirsch

As long as there's been poetry, there have been lamentations.

— Edward Hirsch

I read a lot as a kid and in high school.

— Edward Hirsch

I think fiction goes to poetry for the intensity of its use of language.

— Edward Hirsch

There has never been a great poet who wasn't also a great reader of poetry.

— Edward Hirsch

There's never been a culture without poetry in the history of the world.

— Edward Hirsch

Life has to have the plenitude of art.

— Edward Hirsch

A poem is a hand, a hook, a prayer. It is a soul in action.

— Edward Hirsch

I think that as long as you have other poets before you and that you can learn from them, then it's always…

— Edward Hirsch

Once your poems are completed, you send them into the world. You don't write for a coterie of other writers - you…

— Edward Hirsch

There are a lot of poems where I am questing for God. I don't think there is any finding of God.

— 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…

— Edward Hirsch

I am a tiny seashell that has secretly drifted ashore and carries the sound of the ocean surging through its body.

— Edward Hirsch

I think one of the things that distinguished my work from the beginning when I was in college was my turning towards…

— Edward Hirsch

Poetry takes courage because you have to face things and you try to articulate how you feel.

— Edward Hirsch

As soon as something happens to us in America, everyone begins talking about healing. But before you heal, you have to mourn.

— Edward Hirsch

Poetry connects us to what is deepest in ourselves. It gives us access to our own feelings, which are often shadowy, and…

— Edward Hirsch

As far as I'm concerned, freedom is the most important thing to creativity. You should feel free to write in whatever way,…

— Edward Hirsch

You're shadowed by your own dream, especially as you get older, of trying to create something that will last in poetry. And…

— Edward Hirsch

The idea of how to read a poem is based on the idea that poetry needs you as a reader. That the…

— Edward Hirsch

In Náhuatl, the language of the Aztec world, one key word for poet was 'tlamatine,' meaning 'the one who knows,' or 'he…

— Edward Hirsch

I mean, in the history of poetry there have been a lot poetries where you have to inherit the position of poet…

— Edward Hirsch

I walk with Federico Garcia Lorca around the Upper West Side in Manhattan because that was a neighborhood he lived in and…

— Edward Hirsch

“For all the insomniacs of the world I want to build a new kind of machine For flying out of the body…

— Edward Hirsch

“I did not know the work of mourning Is like carrying a bag of cement Up a mountain at night The mountaintop…

— Edward Hirsch

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

After my grandfather died I went down to the basement of my family house where my family kept books, anthologies and things…

— Edward Hirsch

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

Often you've read another poem that you think is so beautiful that you'd like to make something like that. And so you…

— Edward Hirsch

“When Ungaretti lost his nine-year-old boy He understood that death is death In an extremely brutal way It was the most terrible…

— Edward Hirsch

I would say there are different kinds of poems. There are things that poets in the history of poetry hit upon when…

— Edward Hirsch

One of the things that happens to everyone who is grief-stricken, who has lost someone, is there comes a time when everyone…

— Edward Hirsch

“The population of his feelings Could not be governed By the authorities He had reasons why Reason disobeyed him And voted him…

— Edward Hirsch

“Rainer Maria Rilke sacrificed everything For his art he dedicated himself To the Great Work I admired his single-mindedness All through my…

— Edward Hirsch

“I did not know the work of mourning Is like carrying a bag of cement Up a mountain at night The mountaintop…

— Edward Hirsch

“A Partial History of My Stupidity Traffic was heavy coming off the bridge and I took the road to the right, the…

— Edward Hirsch

“Fall" Fall, falling, fallen. That’s the way the season Changes its tense in the long-haired maples That dot the road; the veiny…

— Edward Hirsch

“The evening with its lamps burning The night with its head in its hands The early morning I look back at the…

— Edward Hirsch

Poetry is a vocation. It is not a career but a calling.

— Edward Hirsch

Depression is a feeling without a cause. Mourning has a cause.

— Edward Hirsch