Quote

I think that as long as you have other poets before you and that you can learn from them, then it's always open ended for you.

Edward Hirsch

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Edward Hirsch
Age: 74
Born: 1950
Born: January 20
Poet
Chicago
Illinois
Ended
Poet
Open
Learn
Long
Always
Think
Thinking
Poets

More quotes by Edward Hirsch

Image
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
Image
I was once doing a question and answer period with the novelist Jane Smiley in a bookstore and someone asked us what our processes were and Jane said hers and then I said mine and Jane said, Well, if I had a student like that I'd force him never to write like that again because you could never write a novel in the way that you write poetry.
Edward Hirsch
Image
A poem is a hand, a hook, a prayer. It is a soul in action.
Edward Hirsch
Image
That you write a phrase or you think of something and it seems to have a deeper charge because the title has to be some kind of marker, something setting out a space, creating a space for what's going to come.
Edward Hirsch
Image
So, some of the most difficult formal poems that I've written, say one sentence sonnets, I've been able to do those fairly quickly whereas some of the clearest, simplest lyrics that I've written have taken me the longest to get to the clarity of feeling that you're looking for.
Edward Hirsch
Image
I think fiction goes to poetry for the intensity of its use of language.
Edward Hirsch
Image
And my experience is the best titles, for me, emerge in the process of writing. They don't usually come at the very beginning and hopefully they don't come at the very end because then it's getting late in the day.
Edward Hirsch
Image
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
Image
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
Image
And Mandelstam says a poet - you go down to the shore and you see an unlikely looking from a bottle from the past, you open it. Mandelstam says, It's okay to do so. I'm not reading someone else's mail. It was addressed to whoever found it. I found it, therefore it's addressed to me.
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'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
So, the result though is by the time I've got something, it's been worked over so many times that although I do make changes as the end, often by the time I've gotten it, it's pretty much completed.
Edward Hirsch
Image
One of the deep fundamentals of poetry is the recurrence of sounds, syllables, words, phrases, lines, and stanzas. Repetition can be one of the most intoxicating features of poetry. It creates expectations, which can be fulfilled or frustrated. It can create a sense of boredom and complacency, but it can also incite enchantment and inspire bliss.
Edward Hirsch
Image
In high school I was leafing through an anthology that our teachers had given up and I found a poem, I go, That's so strange. This poem looks so much like my grandfather's poem.
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
I am a tiny seashell that has secretly drifted ashore and carries the sound of the ocean surging through its body.
Edward Hirsch
Image
Now, that can be a traditional form or it can be something you're inventing. It can be the development of a metaphor, the working through of a metaphor.
Edward Hirsch
Image
The very good thing about MFA programs is their democratizing. They bring a lot of different people to the table.
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