Poet Quotes by Edward Hirsch

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

— Edward Hirsch

The poets needed to learn to pay greater attention to character and to narrative.

— Edward Hirsch

I'm a poet, and I spent my life in poetry.

— Edward Hirsch

It's absolutely crucial to maintain my life as a poet.

— Edward Hirsch

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

“am born a poet, of a low class without doubt yet a poet. This is my nature and vocation”),”

— 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

I was surprised recently to find a book called "Poetry in Persons" that's coming out about visit to poets to a class…

— Edward Hirsch

I would keep in mind to a young poet that you are entering into something that is very important, that has always…

— Edward Hirsch

The poet wants justice. And the poet wants art. In poetry we can't have one without the other.

— Edward Hirsch

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

I began to imitate what I was reading, and I started to become a poet, even though what I was writing were…

— Edward Hirsch

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

In American tradition a certain kind of, I would say, desperate American friendliness in which the poet tries to reach out through…

— Edward Hirsch

Emily Dickinson calls previous poets her kinsmen of the shelf. You can always be consoled by your kinsmen of the shelf and…

— Edward Hirsch

I think that the dark side of MFA programs is that they're generating more poets than the culture can absorb and there…

— 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

The idea that a poem was a made thing stayed with me, and I decided then that I wanted to be an…

— Edward Hirsch

Now, I do say, "It's possible. You might be the first. I'm not saying it's impossible, but the odds are very much…

— Edward Hirsch

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

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

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

When I taught at the University of Houston in the Creative Writing program we required the poets to take workshops in fiction…

— Edward Hirsch

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

And sometimes you look at the first poems by someone and you go, "They have freshness and a sense of wonder that…

— Edward Hirsch

The way to become a poet is to read poetry and to imitate what you read and to read passionately and widely…

— Edward Hirsch

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

A stress on the system and I think a painful thing for many young poets who are looking to find a life…

— Edward Hirsch

Ultimately you're trying to reach across and find some other person, some other human warmth. But it is, especially in written poetry,…

— 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

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

Readers bring their own experiences, their own range of - their own wisdom, their own knowledge, their own insights to poem and…

— Edward Hirsch

I think in terms of educating a group of readers, MFA programs are very good. I just think the model of MFA…

— Edward Hirsch

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

There are many poets that use as my models. In my first book of poems, I had several for the "Sleepwalkers," I…

— Edward Hirsch

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

And Mandelstam says a poet - you go down to the shore and you see an unlikely looking from a bottle from…

— Edward Hirsch