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think what you hope for is that at different times of your life you're able to write the poetry that reflects the moment that you're in on your own journey.

Edward Hirsch

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Edward Hirsch
Age: 74
Born: 1950
Born: January 20
Poet
Chicago
Illinois
Different
Poetry
Writing
Journey
Think
Times
Thinking
Moment
Life
Hope
Write
Moments
Able
Reflects

More quotes by Edward Hirsch

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I didn't sit down then and start writing poems, but it was in the back of my mind.
Edward Hirsch
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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
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The poets needed to learn to pay greater attention to character and to narrative.
Edward Hirsch
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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
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A poem is a hand, a hook, a prayer. It is a soul in action.
Edward Hirsch
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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
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I would say there are different kinds of poems. There are things that poets in the history of poetry hit upon when they're very young that can never be outdone and it's a remarkable, strange experience when you think of say Arthur Rimbaud who write poetry between the ages of 17 and 21 whose career was over by the time he was 22.
Edward Hirsch
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I would keep in mind to a young poet that you are entering into something that is very important, that has always been important in terms of human concerns.
Edward Hirsch
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Television watching does reduce reading and often encroaches on homework. Much of it is admittedly the intellectual equivalent of junk food. But in some respects, such as its use of standard written English, television watching is acculturative.
Edward Hirsch
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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
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I think poetry will survive and I don't think it will be the end of poetry. Our tremendous onslaught of mass media all the time that we're suffering and we don't really know how to think about, I think that puts certain things at risk.
Edward Hirsch
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Emily Dickinson calls previous poets her kinsmen of the shelf. You can always be consoled by your kinsmen of the shelf and you can participate in poetry by going to them and by trying to make something worthy of them.
Edward Hirsch
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But, something has to be worked through formally as well as emotionally. Now, when those two things come together I've got something, I think, that I can be proud of.
Edward Hirsch
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There are many poets that use as my models. In my first book of poems, I had several for the Sleepwalkers, I had several poems that were apprentice poems like this in which I take a walk with a poet who is no longer alive.
Edward Hirsch
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I mean, in the history of poetry there have been a lot poetries where you have to inherit the position of poet from your ancestors and I think that if you just leave anyone to become a poet based on an aristocratic society, then a lot of people are left out who might have something to offer.
Edward Hirsch
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It's not important - it's not necessary that you read everything. What is necessary is that you care about things that you read and that you find something that really matters to you and you try and make something like that.
Edward Hirsch
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Cafeteria-style education, combined with the unwillingness of our schools to place demands on students, has resulted in a steady diminishment of commonly shared information between generations and between young people themselves.
Edward Hirsch
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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
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So, it's a continual process of trial and error and then I find things and I throw it out and start again, but I keep writing it over again.
Edward Hirsch
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I guess that would have been 1968. I was a freshman in college and I wasn't writing good poems, but I was at least trying to write poems then.
Edward Hirsch