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
But, that was the beginning, though I didn't start writing until I was in high school and when I was in high… — 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
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
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 think fiction goes to poetry for the intensity of its use of language. — 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
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
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
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
And what I've found over time is that for me to write a poem that I think is worthy that I can… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
I don't think poetry will die, but I think that poetry does demand a certain kind of attention to language. — 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
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
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 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 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
Someone who's awake in the middle of the night is a soul consciousness when everyone else is asleep, and that creates a… — 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
Writing poetry is such an intense experience that it helps to start the process in a casual or wayward frame of mind. — 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 grew up in a middle-class house without books, without art. No one around me wrote poetry or even read it. — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
I guess that would have been 1968. I was a freshman in college and I wasn't writing good poems, but I was… — 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
