Books Quote by Edward Hirsch

The reading of a poem should be an experience. Its writing must be all the more so.

— Wallace Stevens

A poem is what the reader lives through under the guidance of the text and experiences as relevant to the text.

— Louise Rosenblatt

The idea that a poem was a made thing stayed with me, and I decided then that I wanted to be an artist, not…

— Edward Hirsch

And when you are entering into poetry, whatever stage you're at, you are participating in something with a very long and noble tradition.

— Edward Hirsch

poets are privileged to utter more than they can always quite explain, bringing up from the mind's unplumbed depths tokens of the nature of…

— Vernon Lee

An experienced reader uses the poem as an agent of inquiry. This makes poetry very exciting, unstable, and interactive.

— Anonymous

For poetry is, I believe, always an act of the spirit. The poem teaches us something while we make it. The poem makes you…

— May Sarton

When a poet's mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate experiences.

— Anonymous

My focus is on the reader and that the poet's job is not to inspire himself or herself. The poet's job is to inspire…

— Edward Hirsch

“Poems ought to reflect the work the poet does, and his relationships with other people, and family, and institutions, and organization.”

— Wallace Stegner

A poem doesn't do everything for you. You are supposed to go on with your thinking. You are supposed to enrich the other person's…

— Gwendolyn Brooks

A lot of people are writing poems and don't realize it. They have this limited idea of how the poem should sound or what…

— Matthea Harvey