The imagination is an organ of understanding. And the imagination needs all the faculties at hand, all the sensibility, all the conscious… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
I would be happier if people who went through MFA programs also were already, by then, deeply committed readers of poetry because… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
I need to live like that crooked tree--... that knelt down in the hardest winds but could not be blasted away. — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
There's always some place to go. You don't need workshops, you don't need friends necessarily, you can be befriended by literature itself. — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
You're alone with yourself and your own feelings and that gives you deeper access to what you need to get in touch… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
The spiritual desire for poetry can be overwhelming, so much do I need it to experience and name my own perilous depths… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
The idea of how to read a poem is based on the idea that poetry needs you as a reader. That the… — 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
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
So, the process of revision, it's not systematic. But for me, I mean, I know a lot of poets who write out… — 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
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
