Writing Quotes by Edward Hirsch

I think the culture can absorb so many people writing poetry and trying to earn their living in poetry.

— Edward Hirsch

Writing poetry is such an intense experience that it helps to start the process in a casual or wayward frame of mind.

— Edward Hirsch

The line is a way of framing poetry. All verse is measured by lines. The poetic line immediately announces its difference from…

— Edward Hirsch

When I was young, I wrote everything, and I thought I would be an all around writer, that I would write everything.

— Edward Hirsch

think what you hope for is that at different times of your life you're able to write the poetry that reflects the…

— Edward Hirsch

Once your poems are completed, you send them into the world. You don't write for a coterie of other writers - you…

— Edward Hirsch

I didn't sit down then and start writing poems, but it was in the back of my mind.

— Edward Hirsch

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

I mean, when I was young I could write all through the night and I loved to work late into the night.…

— Edward Hirsch

The mysterious thing about writing poetry is that when you're - when things are going poorly, when you're not thinking well, even…

— Edward Hirsch

I would be happier if people who went through MFA programs also were already, by then, deeply committed readers of poetry because…

— Edward Hirsch

I think that the dark side of MFA programs is that they're generating more poets than the culture can absorb and there…

— Edward Hirsch

I write a line and then I revise the line and then I write two lines and then I revise lines one…

— Edward Hirsch

Books and newspapers assume a "common reader" that is, a person who knows the things known by other literate persons in the…

— Edward Hirsch

“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

Fiction writers learn about the development of metaphor, the use of rhythm, the way that language is compacted in order to express…

— Edward Hirsch

I would say there are different kinds of poems. There are things that poets in the history of poetry hit upon when…

— Edward Hirsch

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

I was once doing a question and answer period with the novelist Jane Smiley in a bookstore and someone asked us what…

— Edward Hirsch

When I taught at the University of Houston in the Creative Writing program we required the poets to take workshops in fiction…

— Edward Hirsch

I began to imitate what I was reading, and I started to become a poet, even though what I was writing were…

— Edward Hirsch

Now, as I've gotten older I've been able to write more quickly. Sometimes I get in the space of something and I…

— Edward Hirsch

And when I'm writing well and when I'm inside the feeling, then I can do fairly complicated things with some fluency.

— Edward Hirsch

Poems mesmerized me, and I felt better when I was writing them, or trying to - more in touch with something deep…

— Edward Hirsch

Now, the process of writing poetry is very messy. Not systematic, never quite the same

— Edward Hirsch

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

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

Gertrude Stein said, "I write for myself and strangers." I would say I write for myself, strangers and the great dead.

— Edward Hirsch

So, it's a continual process of trial and error and then I find things and I throw it out and start again,…

— Edward Hirsch

I think the deepest thing is that many fiction writers tell stories but are not elegant writers. But, we're not writing journalism…

— Edward Hirsch

I started writing poetry as a teenager in suburban Chicago out of emotional desperation.

— Edward Hirsch

James Salter is a consummate storyteller. His manners are precise and elegant; he has a splendid New York accent; he runs his…

— Edward Hirsch

You're trying to write about something that's sacred. You're trying to bring the seriousness of life and death to it, and you're…

— Edward Hirsch

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

She [Carol Parsinan] somehow read my poems and came back to me and convinced me that I could be a poet, that…

— Edward Hirsch

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

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

Sometimes I have a feeling that I just can't get rid of. Sometimes there's an experience that I want to write about…

— Edward Hirsch

When I taught at the University of Houston in the Creative Writing program, we required the poets to take workshops in fiction…

— Edward Hirsch

We're trying to make something that lasts in language and there's no question that many fiction writers began as poets and it's…

— Edward Hirsch