Edward Hirsch
Edward Hirsch
Edward Hirschis an American poet and critic who wrote a national bestseller about reading poetry. He has published nine books of poems, including The Living Fire: New and Selected Poems, which brings together thirty-five years of work, and Gabriel: A Poem, a book-length elegy for his son that The New Yorker calls “a masterpiece of sorrow.” He has also published five prose books about poetry. He is president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in New York City...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth20 January 1950
CountryUnited States of America
There are still many tribal cultures where poetry and song, there is just one word for them. There are other cultures with literacy where poetry and song are distinguished. But poetry always remembers that it has its origins in music.
Poetry is meant to inspire readers and listeners, to connect them more deeply to themselves even as it links them more fully to others. But many people feel put off by the terms of poetry, its odd vocabulary, its notorious difficulty.
One of the things that happens to everyone who is grief-stricken, who has lost someone, is there comes a time when everyone else just wants you to get over it, but of course you don't get over it. You get stronger; you try and live on; you endure; you change; but you don't get over it. You carry it with you.
There's never been a culture without poetry in the history of the world.
As soon as something happens to us in America, everyone begins talking about healing. But before you heal, you have to mourn.
Depression is a feeling without a cause. Mourning has a cause.
Each book should be an entity unto itself, with its own structure, character, life, name.
I began to imitate what I was reading, and I started to become a poet, even though what I was writing were not good poems.
I come from Chicago, and the landscape of the Midwest has always meant a great deal to me.
I found a comfort in trying to solve some poetic problems because there were human ones I just couldn't solve.
I grew up in a middle-class house without books, without art. No one around me wrote poetry or even read it.
I like the machinery of poems, especially when they have human warmth.
I'm a poet, and I spent my life in poetry.
I'm so happy to be an advocate for poetry.