Quote

A hook shot kisses the rim and hangs there, helplessly, but doesn't drop and for once our gangly starting center boxes out his man and times his jump perfectly, gathering the orange leather/from the air like a cherished possession.

Edward Hirsch

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Edward Hirsch
Age: 74
Born: 1950
Born: January 20
Poet
Chicago
Illinois
Times
Center
Leather
Doesn
Shot
Hook
Men
Possession
Gathering
Gangly
Like
Kissing
Orange
Helplessly
Shots
Jump
Rims
Starting
Drop
Hangs
Basketball
Perfectly
Cherished
Air
Boxes
Kisses

More quotes by Edward Hirsch

Image
In American tradition a certain kind of, I would say, desperate American friendliness in which the poet tries to reach out through the page to make a connection by the side of the road with some other person.
Edward Hirsch
Image
When I was a freshman in college I went to Grinnell College in Iowa. I brought my poems to my freshman humanities teacher whose name was Carol Parsinan, a wonderful teacher. And Carol did a really great thing for me. She taught me more than anyone.
Edward Hirsch
Image
The idea of a poem as a message in a bottle means that it's sent out towards some future reader and the reader who opens that bottle becomes the addressee of the literary text.
Edward Hirsch
Image
I need to live like that crooked tree--... that knelt down in the hardest winds but could not be blasted away.
Edward Hirsch
Image
Language is an impure medium. Speech is public property and words are the soiled products, not of nature, but of society, which circulates and uses them for a thousand different ends.
Edward Hirsch
Image
I didn't sit down then and start writing poems, but it was in the back of my mind.
Edward Hirsch
Image
There has never been a great poet who wasn't also a great reader of poetry.
Edward Hirsch
Image
You can seek clarity, you can seek warmth, you can try to make something for lasting. You can pack something in salt so that it's well made and you can hope that it outlasts time. But, ultimately that's not up to you.
Edward Hirsch
Image
In Náhuatl, the language of the Aztec world, one key word for poet was 'tlamatine,' meaning 'the one who knows,' or 'he who knows something.' Poets were considered 'sages of the word,' who meditated on human enigmas and explored the beyond, the realm of the gods.
Edward Hirsch
Image
You're alone with yourself and your own feelings and that gives you deeper access to what you need to get in touch with to write poetry.
Edward Hirsch
Image
I would be happier if people who went through MFA programs also were already, by then, deeply committed readers of poetry because we need readers of poetry as much as writers of poetry.
Edward Hirsch
Image
Reading poetry is an adventure in renewal, a creative act, a perpetual beginning, a rebirth of wonder.
Edward Hirsch
Image
A certain construct of emotions that really define who you are and who you will become and I feel very much that my childhood is very alive inside of me, very close to me, very much part of me. And it's a sometimes painful, sometimes joyous inexhaustible resource for poetry.
Edward Hirsch
Image
There's the brilliant audacity of youth that poets strike upon in their earliest work sometimes that they never can hit upon again.
Edward Hirsch
Image
There's never been a culture without poetry in the history of the world. In every culture, in every language there is expressive play, expressive word play, there's language use to different purposes that we would call poetry.
Edward Hirsch
Image
We will be able to achieve a just and prosperous society only when our schools ensure that everyone commands enough shared background knowledge to be able to communicate effectively with everyone else.
Edward Hirsch
Image
I wish I wrote drafts and then revised them, but I don't. What I do is I seem to revise as I go.
Edward Hirsch
Image
The mysterious thing about writing poetry is that when you're - when things are going poorly, when you're not thinking well, even making two sentences together is extremely hard and I just can't make the connections.
Edward Hirsch
Image
Now, the process of writing poetry is very messy. Not systematic, never quite the same
Edward Hirsch
Image
I was surprised recently to find a book called Poetry in Persons that's coming out about visit to poets to a class that Pearl London gave.
Edward Hirsch