---
title: "59 Poetry Quotes By Jane Hirshfield"
description: "Jane Hirshfield's poetry quotes explore everyday chores, unknowing, and the wonder of creative insight."
image: "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/adf/jane-hirshfield-2649_amazement_existence-itself-is-nothing-if-not-an-am_821830.png"
---

> [Existence itself is nothing if not an amazement. Good poems restore amazement.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/existence-itself-is-nothing-if-not-an-amazement-good-poems-restore/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/adf/jane-hirshfield-2649_amazement_existence-itself-is-nothing-if-not-an-am_821830.png)

> [A poem can use anything to talk about anything.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/a-poem-can-use-anything-to-talk-about-anything/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/f87/jane-hirshfield-2649_poem_a-poem-can-use-anything-to-talk-about-an_1408557.png)

> [Poetry's task is to increase the available stock of reality, R P Blackmur said.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/poetry-s-task-is-to-increase-the-available-stock-of-reality-r-p/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/24e/jane-hirshfield-2649_available_poetry-s-task-is-to-increase-the-availab_1763471.png)

> [“Wrong solitude vinegars the soul, right solitude oils it.”](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/wrong-solitude-vinegars-the-soul-right-solitude-oils-it/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/72f/jane-hirshfield-2649_oil_wrong-solitude-vinegars-the-soul-right-s_2285396.png)

> [Poetry's work is the clarification and magnification of being.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/poetry-s-work-is-the-clarification-and-magnification-of-being/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/5bc/jane-hirshfield-2649_clarification_poetry-s-work-is-the-clarification-and-m_3228036.png)

> [So much of our lives depends on accidents of birth, time, and geography. This haunts me. In some lives, few "or"s are…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/so-much-of-our-lives-depends-on-accidents-of-birth-time-and-geography/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/b31/jane-hirshfield-2649_accidents_so-much-of-our-lives-depends-on-accident_1321976.png)

> [I'd say that the middle stanza is closer: that's the place where the poem ranges unexpectedly into a different realm.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/i-d-say-that-the-middle-stanza-is-closer-that-s-the-place-where-the/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/178/jane-hirshfield-2649_different_i-d-say-that-the-middle-stanza-is-closer_1811708.png)

> [Poems are always interested in what Ivan Illich called 'shadow work,' not least because that is no small part of their own…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/poems-are-always-interested-in-what-ivan-illich-called-shadow-work/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/af4/jane-hirshfield-2649_poems_poems-are-always-interested-in-what-ivan_935139.png)

> [I feel like I am in the service of the poem. The poem isn't something I make. The poem is something I…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/i-feel-like-i-am-in-the-service-of-the-poem-the-poem-isn-t-something/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/07f/jane-hirshfield-2649_am_i-feel-like-i-am-in-the-service-of-the-p_2973392.png)

> [Poems' deep work is a matter of language, but also a matter of life. One part of that work is to draw…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/poems-deep-work-is-a-matter-of-language-but-also-a-matter-of-life-one/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/448/jane-hirshfield-2649_awareness_poems-deep-work-is-a-matter-of-language_1772408.png)

> [“The heart's actions are neither the sentence nor its reprieve. Salt hay and thistles, above the cold granite. One bird singing back…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/the-heart-s-actions-are-neither-the-sentence-nor-its-reprieve-salt/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/7ff/jane-hirshfield-2649_bird_the-heart-s-actions-are-neither-the-sent_919561.png)

> [Poetry's work is not simply the recording of inner or outer perception; it makes by words and music new possibilities of perceiving](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/poetry-s-work-is-not-simply-the-recording-of-inner-or-outer/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/419/jane-hirshfield-2649_inspirational_poetry-s-work-is-not-simply-the-recordin_1213803.png)

> [Poems allow us not only to bear the tally and toll of our transience, but to perceive, within their continually surprising abundance,…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/poems-allow-us-not-only-to-bear-the-tally-and-toll-of-our-transience/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/01a/jane-hirshfield-2649_abundance_poems-allow-us-not-only-to-bear-the-tall_2210977.png)

> [“The world asks, as it asks daily: And what can you make, can you do, to change my deep-broken, fractured? I count,…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/the-world-asks-as-it-asks-daily-and-what-can-you-make-can-you-do-to/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/fca/jane-hirshfield-2649_another-year_the-world-asks-as-it-asks-daily-and-what_2024894.png)

> [Go back to The October Palace, which came out in 1994, and there are poems with windows, doors, the rooms of the…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/go-back-to-the-october-palace-which-came-out-in-1994-and-there-are/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/def/jane-hirshfield-2649_archetype_go-back-to-the-october-palace-which-came_1012726.png)

> [At some unnoticed moment, I began to understand that a life is written in indelible ink. What I've chosen, what's happened unchosen,…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/at-some-unnoticed-moment-i-began-to-understand-that-a-life-is-written-2/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/59b/jane-hirshfield-2649_chosen_at-some-unnoticed-moment-i-began-to-unde_1341595.jpg)

> [The writing of an assay-type poem or a poem investigating perspective isn't an exercise of rational or strategic mind. Poems for me…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/the-writing-of-an-assay-type-poem-or-a-poem-investigating-perspective/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/f80/jane-hirshfield-2649_desperation_the-writing-of-an-assay-type-poem-or-a-p_1585904.png)

> [The heft of a life in the hands grows both lighter and weightier. Over time, my life has become more saturated with…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/the-heft-of-a-life-in-the-hands-grows-both-lighter-and-weightier-over/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/18c/jane-hirshfield-2649_firsts_the-heft-of-a-life-in-the-hands-grows-bo_2943424.png)

> [“ To Hear the Falling World Only if I move my arm a certain way, it comes back. Or the way the…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/to-hear-the-falling-world-only-if-i-move-my-arm-a-certain-way-it/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/f61/jane-hirshfield-2649_fall_to-hear-the-falling-world-only-if-i-move_3183066.jpg)

> [Poems offer us counter-knowledges. They let us see what is invisible to ordinary looking, and to find in overlooked corners the opulence…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/poems-offer-us-counter-knowledges-they-let-us-see-what-is-invisible/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/ee2/jane-hirshfield-2649_actual-life_poems-offer-us-counter-knowledges-they-l_1388024.png)

> [Art-making is learned by immersion. You take in vocabularies of thought and feeling, grammar, diction, gesture, from the poems of others, and…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/art-making-is-learned-by-immersion-you-take-in-vocabularies-of/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/df2/jane-hirshfield-2649_art_art-making-is-learned-by-immersion-you-t_1988238.jpg)

> [Any artist, in any field, wants to press deeper, to discover further. Image and sound play are among the strongest colors available…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/any-artist-in-any-field-wants-to-press-deeper-to-discover-further/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/12a/jane-hirshfield-2649_art_any-artist-in-any-field-wants-to-press-d_2849606.png)

> [Poems give us permission to be unsure, in ways we must be if we are ever to learn anything not already known.…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/poems-give-us-permission-to-be-unsure-in-ways-we-must-be-if-we-are/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/b37/jane-hirshfield-2649_accepting_poems-give-us-permission-to-be-unsure-in_2298692.jpg)

> [Immensity is always there, but we so often become numb to it, or deceive ourselves into thinking our own lives and selves…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/immensity-is-always-there-but-we-so-often-become-numb-to-it-or/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/429/jane-hirshfield-2649_amnesia_immensity-is-always-there-but-we-so-ofte_460061.png)

> [The secret of understanding poetry is to hear poetry's words as what they are: the full self's most intimate speech, half waking,…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/the-secret-of-understanding-poetry-is-to-hear-poetry-s-words-as-what/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/784/jane-hirshfield-2649_dream_the-secret-of-understanding-poetry-is-to_2507943.png)

> [“All writers recognize this surge of striking; in its energies the objects of the world are made new, alchemized by their passage…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/all-writers-recognize-this-surge-of-striking-in-its-energies-the/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/213/jane-hirshfield-2649_creativity_all-writers-recognize-this-surge-of-stri_3208765.png)

> [I require silence to write the way an apple tree requires winter to make fruit. Being with people is intimate and joyous,…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/i-require-silence-to-write-the-way-an-apple-tree-requires-winter-to/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/906/jane-hirshfield-2649_apple-trees_i-require-silence-to-write-the-way-an-ap_572312.png)

> [I once was asked to contribute to a mushroom poem anthology. I didn't have anything, and so instead ended up writing the…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/i-once-was-asked-to-contribute-to-a-mushroom-poem-anthology-i-didn-t/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/dce/jane-hirshfield-2649_anthology_i-once-was-asked-to-contribute-to-a-mush_75677.png)

> [“The first intimation of a new romance for a woman of the court was the arrival at her door of a messenger…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/the-first-intimation-of-a-new-romance-for-a-woman-of-the-court-was/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/ec5/jane-hirshfield-2649_poem_the-first-intimation-of-a-new-romance-fo_1212118.png)

> [“It is, of course, we who house poems as much as their words, and we ourselves must be the locus of poetry's…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/it-is-of-course-we-who-house-poems-as-much-as-their-words-and-we/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/e23/jane-hirshfield-2649_poetry_it-is-of-course-we-who-house-poems-as-mu_709882.png)

> [“ Each Moment a White Bull Steps Shining into the World If the gods bring to you a strange and frightening creature,…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/each-moment-a-white-bull-steps-shining-into-the-world-if-the-gods/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/b78/jane-hirshfield-2649_gift_each-moment-a-white-bull-steps-shining-i_1248612.png)

> [One reason to write a poem is to flush from the deep thickets of the self some thought, feeling, comprehension, question, music,…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/one-reason-to-write-a-poem-is-to-flush-from-the-deep-thickets-of-the/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/8fb/jane-hirshfield-2649_comprehension_one-reason-to-write-a-poem-is-to-flush-f_1646874.png)

> [I need more and more silence, it feels. Poems don't leap into my mind when I'm distracted, turned outward, with other people,…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/i-need-more-and-more-silence-it-feels-poems-don-t-leap-into-my-mind/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/c28/jane-hirshfield-2649_distracted_i-need-more-and-more-silence-it-feels-po_3002133.png)

> [Poetry is a release of something previously unknown into the visible. You write to invite that, to make of yourself a gathering…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/poetry-is-a-release-of-something-previously-unknown-into-the-visible/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/8be/jane-hirshfield-2649_gathering_poetry-is-a-release-of-something-previou_1129903.png)

> [A certain amount of housekeeping also goes on in my poems. I wash doorknobs, do dishes, mop floors, patch carpets, cook.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/a-certain-amount-of-housekeeping-also-goes-on-in-my-poems-i-wash/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/1b7/jane-hirshfield-2649_amount_a-certain-amount-of-housekeeping-also-go_137691.png)

> [A studio, like a poem, is an intimacy and a freedom you can look out from, into each part of your life…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/a-studio-like-a-poem-is-an-intimacy-and-a-freedom-you-can-look-out/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/4b9/jane-hirshfield-2649_freedom_a-studio-like-a-poem-is-an-intimacy-and_2278837.png)

> [One way poetry connects is across time. . . . Some echo of a writer's physical experience comes into us when we read her poem.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/one-way-poetry-connects-is-across-time-some-echo-of-a-writer-s/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/4a8/jane-hirshfield-2649_echoes_one-way-poetry-connects-is-across-time-s_2779409.png)

> [I don't work on poems and essays at once. They walk on different legs, speak with different tongues, draw from different parts…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/i-don-t-work-on-poems-and-essays-at-once-they-walk-on-different-legs/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/e06/jane-hirshfield-2649_different_i-don-t-work-on-poems-and-essays-at-once_2530564.png)

> [One breath taken completely; one poem, fully written, fully read - in such a moment, anything can happen.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/one-breath-taken-completely-one-poem-fully-written-fully-read-in-such/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/780/jane-hirshfield-2649_anything-can-happen_one-breath-taken-completely-one-poem-ful_2436099.png)

> [Poems . . . are perfume bottles momentarily unstopped—what they release is volatile and will vanish, and yet it can be released again,](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/poems-are-perfume-bottles-momentarily-unstopped-what-they-release-is/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/e3a/jane-hirshfield-2649_bottles_poems-are-perfume-bottles-momentarily-un_1456275.png)

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## More by Jane Hirshfield

> [I don't have a cell phone (though for years I've kept saying, "soon").](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/i-don-t-have-a-cell-phone-though-for-years-i-ve-kept-saying-soon/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

> [I once was asked to contribute to a mushroom poem anthology. I didn't have anything, and so instead ended up writing the introduction. I…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/i-once-was-asked-to-contribute-to-a-mushroom-poem-anthology-i-didn-t/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

> [Everything has two endings- a horse, a piece of string, a phone call. Before a life, air. And after. As silence is not silence,…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/everything-has-two-endings-a-horse-a-piece-of-string-a-phone-call/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

> [A certain amount of housekeeping also goes on in my poems. I wash doorknobs, do dishes, mop floors, patch carpets, cook.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/a-certain-amount-of-housekeeping-also-goes-on-in-my-poems-i-wash/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

> [Self carries grief as a pack mule carries the side bags, being careful between the trees to leave extra room.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/self-carries-grief-as-a-pack-mule-carries-the-side-bags-being-careful/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

> [My job as a human being as well as a writer is to feel as thoroughly as possible the experience that I am part…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/my-job-as-a-human-being-as-well-as-a-writer-is-to-feel-as-thoroughly/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

> [I want to preserve a certain unknowing about my own poems - perhaps because unknowing is in itself a useful poetic thirst. To move…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/i-want-to-preserve-a-certain-unknowing-about-my-own-poems-perhaps/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

> [Habit, laziness, and fear conspire to keep us comfortably within the familiar.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/habit-laziness-and-fear-conspire-to-keep-us-comfortably-within-the/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

> [In order to gain anything, you must first lose everything](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/in-order-to-gain-anything-you-must-first-lose-everything/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

> [The same words come from each mouth differently.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/the-same-words-come-from-each-mouth-differently/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

> [Metaphors think with the imagination and the senses. The hot chili peppers in them explode in the mouth and the mind.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/metaphors-think-with-the-imagination-and-the-senses-the-hot-chili/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

> [Your fate is to be yourself, both punishment and crime.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/your-fate-is-to-be-yourself-both-punishment-and-crime/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

> [Near even a candle, the visible heat. So it is with a person in love.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/near-even-a-candle-the-visible-heat-so-it-is-with-a-person-in-love/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

> [At some point I realized that you don't get a full human life if you try to cut off one end of it, that…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/at-some-point-i-realized-that-you-don-t-get-a-full-human-life-if-you/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

> [Immensity is always there, but we so often become numb to it, or deceive ourselves into thinking our own lives and selves are what's…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-hirshfield/immensity-is-always-there-but-we-so-often-become-numb-to-it-or/)

[Jane Hirshfield](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-hirshfield/)

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                        "text": "Go back to The October Palace, which came out in 1994, and there are poems with windows, doors, the rooms of the gorgeous and vanishing palace that is this ordinary world and ordinary life. Jungian archetype would say the house is a figure for the experienced, experiencing self.",
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                        "text": "At some unnoticed moment, I began to understand that a life is written in indelible ink. What I've chosen, what's happened unchosen, can't be unmade or redone. Poetry, though, is a door that only continues to open. Even the unchangeable past changes inside a poem. Not the facts, but the feeling, the comprehension.",
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                        "text": "The writing of an assay-type poem or a poem investigating perspective isn't an exercise of rational or strategic mind. Poems for me are acts of small or large desperation. They grapple with surfaces too steep to walk in any other way, yet which have to be traveled.",
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                        "text": "The heft of a life in the hands grows both lighter and weightier. Over time, my life has become more saturated with its shape and made-ness, while my poems have become more and more free. The first word of every poem might be \"Yes.\" The next words: \"And then.\"",
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                        "text": "“ To Hear the Falling World Only if I move my arm a certain way, it comes back. Or the way the light bends in the trees this time of year, so a scrap of sorrow, like a bird, lights on the heart. I carry this in my body, seed in an unswept corner, husk-encowled and seeming safe. But they guard me, these small pains, from growing sure of myself and perhaps forgetting.”",
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                        "text": "Poems offer us counter-knowledges. They let us see what is invisible to ordinary looking, and to find in overlooked corners the opulence of our actual lives. Similarly, we usually spend our waking hours trying to be sure of things - of our decisions, our ideas, our choices. We so want to be right. But we walk by right foot and left foot.",
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                        "text": "Art-making is learned by immersion. You take in vocabularies of thought and feeling, grammar, diction, gesture, from the poems of others, and emerge with the power to turn language into a lathe for re-shaping, re-knowing your own tongue, heart, and life.",
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                        "text": "Any artist, in any field, wants to press deeper, to discover further. Image and sound play are among the strongest colors available to poetry's palette. For a long time, I've wanted to invite in more strangeness, more freedom of imagination. Yet music, seeing, and meaning are also cohering disciplines. They can be stretched, and that is part of poetry's helium pleasure. But not to the point of breaking.",
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                        "text": "Poems give us permission to be unsure, in ways we must be if we are ever to learn anything not already known. If you look with open eyes at your actual life, it's always going to be the kind of long division problem that doesn't work out perfectly evenly. Poems let you accept the multiplicity and complexity of the actual, they let us navigate the unnavigable, insoluble parts of our individual fates and shared existence.",
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                        "text": "Immensity is always there, but we so often become numb to it, or deceive ourselves into thinking our own lives and selves are what's large. Step into the ocean or walk on Mount Tamalpais, and that kind of amnesia and self-centeredness isn't possible. Enter the natural world at all, you see existence emerge, ripen, fall and continue, and you can't help but feel more tender towards self and others. That summoning into the large and the shared is what poems exist also to do.",
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                        "text": "The secret of understanding poetry is to hear poetry's words as what they are: the full self's most intimate speech, half waking, half dream. You listen to a poem as you might listen to someone you love who tells you their truest day. Their words might weep, joke, whirl, leap. What's unspoken in the words will still be heard. It's also the way we listen to music: You don't look for extractable meaning, but to be moved.",
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                        "text": "“All writers recognize this surge of striking; in its energies the objects of the world are made new, alchemized by their passage through the imaginal, musical, world-foraging and word-forging mind. This altered vision is the secret happiness of poems, of poets. It is as if the poem encounters the world and finds in it a hidden language, a Braille unreadable except when raised by the awakened imaginative mind.”",
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                        "text": "I require silence to write the way an apple tree requires winter to make fruit. Being with people is intimate and joyous, but at some point, I'll wander off by myself. The paradox is that what began in childhood as an act of necessary solitude has led me straight to a life with others, in which I fly to China or Lithuania or northern Minnesota to read my poems and talk with other people who love language made into a lathe on which a life can be tuned and be turned.",
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                        "text": "I once was asked to contribute to a mushroom poem anthology. I didn't have anything, and so instead ended up writing the introduction. I think that request made me more alert to mushrooms, and now they've cropped up in my work, the way mushrooms themselves do after rain, quite a lot. But I've only just now taken up mushroom hunting, after going to a class offered at my local library.",
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                        "text": "“The first intimation of a new romance for a woman of the court was the arrival at her door of a messenger bearing a five-line poem in an unfamiliar hand. If the woman found the poem sufficiently intriguing, the paper it was written on suitable for its contents and mood, and the calligraphy acceptably graceful, her encouraging reply—itself in the form of a poem—would set in motion a clandestine, late-night visit from her suitor. The first night together was, according to established etiquette, sleepless; lovemaking and talk were expected to continue without pause until the man, protesting the night’s brevity, departed in the first light of the predawn. Even then he was not free to turn his thoughts to the day’s official duties: a morning-after poem had to be written and sent off by means of an ever-present messenger page, who would return with the woman’s reply. Only after this exchange had been completed could the night’s success be fully judged by whether the poems were equally ardent and accomplished, referring in image and nuance to the themes of the night just passed. Subsequent visits were made on the same clandestine basis and under the same circumstances, until the relationship was either made official by a private ceremony of marriage or ended. Once she had given her heart, a woman was left to await her lover’s letters and appearances at her door at nightfall. Should he fail to arrive, there might be many explanations—the darkness of the night, inclement weather, inauspicious omens preventing travel, or other interests. Many sleepless nights were spent in hope and speculation, and, as evidenced by the poems in this book, in poetic activity. Throughout the course of a relationship, the exchange of poems served to reassure, remind, rekindle or cool interest, and, in general, to keep the other person aware of a lover’s state of mind. At the same time, poetry was a means of expressing solely for oneself the uncertainties, hopes, and doubts which inevitably accompanied such a system of courtship, as well as a way of exploring other personal concerns.”",
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                        "text": "“It is, of course, we who house poems as much as their words, and we ourselves must be the locus of poetry's depth of newness. Still, the permeability seems to travel both ways: a changed self will find new meanings in a good poem, but a good poem also changes the shape of the self. Having read it, we are not who we were the moment before… Art lives in what it awakens in us... Through a good poem's eyes we see the world liberated from what we would have it do. Existence does not guarantee us destination, nor trust, nor equity, nor one moment beyond this instant's almost weightless duration. It is a triteness to say that the only thing to be counted upon is that what you count on will not be what comes. Utilitarian truths evaporate: we die. Poems allow us not only to bear the tally and toll of our transience, but to perceive, within their continually surprising abundance, a path through the grief of that insult into joy.”",
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                        "text": "“ Each Moment a White Bull Steps Shining into the World If the gods bring to you a strange and frightening creature, accept the gift as if it were one you had chosen. Say the accustomed prayers, oil the hooves well, caress the small ears with praise. Have the new halter of woven silver embedded with jewels. Spare no expense, pay what is asked, when a gift arrives from the sea. Treat it as you yourself would be treated, brought speechless and naked into the court of a king. And when the request finally comes, do not hesitate even an instant---- stroke the white throat, the heavy trembling dewlaps you'd come to believe were yours, and plunge in the knife. Not once did you enter the pasture without pause, without yourself trembling, that you came to love it, that was the gift. Let the envious gods take back what they can.”",
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                        "text": "Poetry is a release of something previously unknown into the visible. You write to invite that, to make of yourself a gathering of the unexpected and, with luck, of the unexpectable.",
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