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.
When poetry separates from song, then the words have to carry all the rhythm themselves; they have to do all the work. They can't rely on the singing voice.
I'm so happy to be an advocate for poetry.
I'm a poet, and I spent my life in poetry.
I'd say people do need some help with poetry because I think poetry just helps takes us to places that Americans aren't always accustomed to going.
I started writing poetry as a teenager in suburban Chicago out of emotional desperation.
I grew up in a middle-class house without books, without art. No one around me wrote poetry or even read it.
As long as there's been poetry, there have been lamentations.
There's never been a culture without poetry in the history of the world.
The muse, the beloved, and duende are three ways of thinking of what is the source of poetry, and all three seem to me different names or different ways to think about something that is not entirely reasonable, not entirely subject to the will, not entirely rational.
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.
I aspire to a poetry of great formal integrity, deep passion and high intellect, and I have many models for how to do that.
Writing poetry is such an intense experience that it helps to start the process in a casual or wayward frame of mind.
I think it's one of the things that drive lyric poetry, our sense of mortality.