Poems are always interested in what Ivan Illich called 'shadow work,' not least because that is no small part of their own… — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
The writing of an assay-type poem or a poem investigating perspective isn't an exercise of rational or strategic mind. Poems for me… — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
I once was asked to contribute to a mushroom poem anthology. I didn't have anything, and so instead ended up writing the… — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
I require silence to write the way an apple tree requires winter to make fruit. Being with people is intimate and joyous,… — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
One way poetry connects is across time. . . . Some echo of a writer's physical experience comes into us when we read her poem. — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
A person is full of sorrow the way a burlap sack is full of stones or sand. — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
The trick, though, is to not lose compassion, to not allow the sense of absurdity to outweigh the awareness of real beings,… — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
The secret of understanding poetry is to hear poetry's words as what they are: the full self's most intimate speech, half waking,… — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
I thought I would love you forever—and, a little, I may, in the way I still move toward a crate, knees bent,… — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
Poems give us permission to be unsure, in ways we must be if we are ever to learn anything not already known.… — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
I don't have a cell phone (though for years I've kept saying, "soon"). — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
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… — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
Everything has two endings- a horse, a piece of string, a phone call. Before a life, air. And after. As silence is not silence,… — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
A certain amount of housekeeping also goes on in my poems. I wash doorknobs, do dishes, mop floors, patch carpets, cook. — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
Self carries grief as a pack mule carries the side bags, being careful between the trees to leave extra room. — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
My job as a human being as well as a writer is to feel as thoroughly as possible the experience that I am part… — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
I want to preserve a certain unknowing about my own poems - perhaps because unknowing is in itself a useful poetic thirst. To move… — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
Habit, laziness, and fear conspire to keep us comfortably within the familiar. — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
Metaphors think with the imagination and the senses. The hot chili peppers in them explode in the mouth and the mind. — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
