I found a comfort in trying to solve some poetic problems because there were human ones I just couldn't solve. — 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
Poems mesmerized me, and I felt better when I was writing them, or trying to - more in touch with something deep… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
Now, the process of writing poetry is very messy. Not systematic, never quite the same — 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
So, some of the most difficult formal poems that I've written, say one sentence sonnets, I've been able to do those fairly… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
The sole literary presence from my childhood was my grandfather, a Jewish immigrant from Latvia, who eccentrically copied poems into the backs… — 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
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
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
The commitment to working at poetry is important because a poet is a maker, and a poem is a made thing. We… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
Readers bring their own experiences, their own range of - their own wisdom, their own knowledge, their own insights to poem and… — 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… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
Poetry connects us to what is deepest in ourselves. It gives us access to our own feelings, which are often shadowy, and… — 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 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
There have always been great defenses of poetry, and I've tried to write mine, and I think all of my work and… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
I have tried to remember throughout that poetry is made by flesh-and-blood human beings. It is a bloody art. It lives on… — 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
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
“If you had told me, though, when I was twenty-four that I would write about Skokie, Illinois, where I grew up, I… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
A novel takes place over time. It's a historical narrative, and it needs to have a series of peaks and valleys and… — 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
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
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
She [Carol Parsinan] somehow read my poems and came back to me and convinced me that I could be a poet, that… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
One, something emotional has to be at stake. There has to be something important for me that I'm writing about. And then… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
I think it shapes it in very deep ways that you don't entirely understand. Rainer Maria Rilke said there are two inexhaustible… — 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… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
I have the idea that lyric poetry is a poetry that's driven by a sense of the presence of death. That there's… — 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
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
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
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
“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
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
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
Poetry is meant to inspire readers and listeners, to connect them more deeply to themselves even as it links them more fully… — 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
![“She [Carol Parsinan] somehow read my poems and came back to me and convinced me that I could be a poet, that I had the passion and the enthusiasm and the creativity to become a poet, but that what I was writing was not poetry because I was just expressing my feelings and I wasn't try to make…” quote by Edward Hirsch](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/a3f/edward-hirsch-1614_carols_she-carol-parsinan-somehow-read-my-poems_3055277.jpg)
