I think in terms of educating a group of readers, MFA programs are very good. I just think the model of MFA… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
In Náhuatl, the language of the Aztec world, one key word for poet was 'tlamatine,' meaning 'the one who knows,' or 'he… — 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
It's very important to me to be an American poet, a Jewish poet, a poet who came of age in the 1960s. — 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
There are many poets that use as my models. In my first book of poems, I had several for the "Sleepwalkers," I… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
And Mandelstam says a poet - you go down to the shore and you see an unlikely looking from a bottle from… — 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
There's been no poet, no great poet in the history of poetry who hasn't also been a great reader of poetry. This… — 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 think that as long as you have other poets before you and that you can learn from them, then it's always… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
The poets needed to learn to pay greater attention to character and to narrative. — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
I mean, in the history of poetry there have been a lot poetries where you have to inherit the position of poet… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
My focus is on the reader and that the poet's job is not to inspire himself or herself. The poet's job is… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
The poet wants justice. And the poet wants art. In poetry we can't have one without the other. — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
And sometimes you look at the first poems by someone and you go, "They have freshness and a sense of wonder that… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
That is many poets don't know how to tell a story and they don't have a sense of how to put things… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
I would keep in mind to a young poet that you are entering into something that is very important, that has always… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
I walk with Federico Garcia Lorca around the Upper West Side in Manhattan because that was a neighborhood he lived in and… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
Emily Dickinson calls previous poets her kinsmen of the shelf. You can always be consoled by your kinsmen of the shelf and… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
In American tradition a certain kind of, I would say, desperate American friendliness in which the poet tries to reach out through… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
The great post-Holocaust poet, Paul Celan, said that a poem is a message in a bottle sent out in the not always… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
I began to imitate what I was reading, and I started to become a poet, even though what I was writing were… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
The idea that a poem was a made thing stayed with me, and I decided then that I wanted to be an… — 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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
...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 Image
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 Image
