I didn't sit down then and start writing poems, but it was in the back of my mind. — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
A certain kind of poetry looks back at experience from an older perspective. — 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
When poetry separates from song, then the words have to carry all the rhythm themselves; they have to do all the work.… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
I aspire to a poetry of great formal integrity, deep passion and high intellect, and I have many models for how to… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
I think it's true that that's something that poetry can go to school on fiction. I think poetry can go to fiction… — 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 poet wants justice. And the poet wants art. In poetry we can't have one without the other. — 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
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
The idea of a poem as a message in a bottle means that it's sent out towards some future reader, and the… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
One of the things that distinguishes poetry from ordinary speech is that in a very few number of words, poetry captures some… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
“Robert Frost liked to distinguish between grievances (complaints) and griefs (sorrows). He even suggested that grievances, which are propagandistic, should be restricted… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
There are still many tribal cultures where poetry and song, there is just one word for them. There are other cultures with… — 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
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
I've been fascinated over the years by the way refrains work. Think, say, of the refrains in Yeats' ballads. Ideally, each time… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
Daydreaming is one of the key sources of poetry - a poem often starts as a daydream that finds its way into… — 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
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
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
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 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
I think it's one of the things that drive lyric poetry, our sense of mortality. — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
There's never been a culture without poetry in the history of the world. — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
There has never been a great poet who wasn't also a great reader of 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
I don't think you can read poetry while you're watching television very well. — 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
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
