Quotes by Edward Hirsch - Page 2

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 / Poet
Long
Poet
Thinking
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As a reader you have a task to do, you have something to do. You bring your experience to it. It's not all inherit in the poem.
Edward Hirsch / Poet
Reader
Tasks
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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 / Poet
Audacity
Brilliant
Youth
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And what I've found over time is that for me to write a poem that I think is worthy that I can live with, two things have to happen.
Edward Hirsch / Poet
Thinking
Two
Writing
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Now, as I've gotten older I've been able to write more quickly. Sometimes I get in the space of something and I can do a lot in a day.
Edward Hirsch / Poet
Space
Able
Writing
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Throughout his work, Philip Levine's most powerful commitment has been to the failed and lost, the marginal, the unloved, the unwanted.
Edward Hirsch / Poet
Most Powerful
Philip
Unloved
Failed
Marginal
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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 / Poet
Feelings
Giving
Writing
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Poems mesmerized me, and I felt better when I was writing them, or trying to - more in touch with something deep and dark within myself.
Edward Hirsch / Poet
Mesmerized
Myself Me Better
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My focus is on the reader and that the poet's job is not to inspire himself or herself. The poet's job is to inspire some future reader.
Edward Hirsch / Poet
Inspire
Reader
Herself
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And when you are entering into poetry, whatever stage you're at, you are participating in something with a very long and noble tradition.
Edward Hirsch / Poet
Entering
Long
Noble
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There's always some place to go. You don't need workshops, you don't need friends necessarily, you can be befriended by literature itself.
Edward Hirsch / Poet
Literature
Needs
Places To Go
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The elegy does the work of mourning; it allows us to experience mortality. It turns loss into remembrance, and it delivers an inheritance.
Edward Hirsch / Poet
Inheritance
Loss
Mortality
Mourning
Remembrance
Turns
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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 / Poet
Book
Class
Pearls
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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 / Poet
Errors
Trial And Error
Writing
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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 / Poet
College
Trying
Writing
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The attention deficit disorder of the culture is very distressing in America now and I think it puts a lot of things at risk, not just poetry.
Edward Hirsch / Poet
America
Risk
Thinking
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Once your poems are completed, you send them into the world. You don't write for a coterie of other writers - you write for other human beings.
Edward Hirsch / Poet
Completed
Send
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The way to become a poet is to read poetry and to imitate what you read and to read passionately and widely and in as involved a way as you can.
Edward Hirsch / Poet
Involved
Poet
Way
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It's hard to think that say Shakespeare could have written "The Tempest" when he was young. It seems to be reflective work or retrospective work.
Edward Hirsch / Poet
Tempest
Thinking
Young
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I think one of the things that distinguished my work from the beginning when I was in college was my turning towards poetry from other countries.
Edward Hirsch / Poet
College
Country
Thinking
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But, the best times I have found, in my life, are late at night or early in the morning and I think it's because you're outside the social realm.
Edward Hirsch / Poet
Morning
Night
Thinking
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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.
Edward Hirsch / Poet
Accustomed
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Sometimes the title comes to you at the beginning, sometimes it comes at the end. The very best way in my experience is when it comes in the middle.
Edward Hirsch / Poet
Sometimes
Titles
Way
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I put down these memorandums of my affections in honor of tenderness, in honor of all of those who have been conscripted into the brotherhood of loss.
Edward Hirsch / Poet
Brotherhood
Healing
Loss
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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 / Poet
Development
Form
Metaphor
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And sometimes you look at the first poems by someone and you go, "They have freshness and a sense of wonder that is never recaptured again by that poet."
Edward Hirsch / Poet
Firsts
Looks
Sometimes
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The line is a way of framing poetry. All verse is measured by lines. The poetic line immediately announces its difference from everyday speech and prose.
Edward Hirsch / Poet
Everyday
Framing
Poetic
Prose
Immediately
Measured
Verse
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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 / Poet
Expressive
Purposes
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The spiritual desire for poetry can be overwhelming, so much do I need it to experience and name my own perilous depths and vast spaces, my own well-being.
Edward Hirsch / Poet
Space
Names
Spiritual
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A stress on the system and I think a painful thing for many young poets who are looking to find a life in poetry that they're not going to be able to find.
Edward Hirsch / Poet
Able
Stress
Thinking
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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 / Poet
Journey
Different
Thinking
Writing
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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.
Edward Hirsch / Poet
Rely
Rhythm
Separates
Singing Voice
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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 / Poet
Entering
Important
Mind
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You're shadowed by your own dream, especially as you get older, of trying to create something that will last in poetry. And so, you're working on its behalf.
Edward Hirsch / Poet
Behalf
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A great model for this is the way that Dante calls on Virgil at the beginning of 'The Inferno,' 'The Divine Comedy,' to help guide him through the underworld.
Edward Hirsch / Poet
Comedy
Helping
Way
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I think the deepest thing is that many fiction writers tell stories but are not elegant writers. But, we're not writing journalism when we're making literature.
Edward Hirsch / Poet
Fiction
Thinking
Writing
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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 / Poet
Thinking
Together
Two
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Rhythm is sound in motion. It is related to the pulse, the heartbeat, the way we breathe. It rises and falls. It takes us into ourselves; it takes us out of ourselves.
Edward Hirsch / Poet
Breathe
Heartbeat
Pulse
Related
Rhythm
Sound
Falls
Motion
Rises
Takes
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As far as I'm concerned, freedom is the most important thing to creativity. You should feel free to write in whatever way, whatever language, feels comfortable to you.
Edward Hirsch / Poet
Most Important Thing
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Civil religion gives American culture its direction and defines its fundamental values, but it does not determine the diversified contents of American national culture.
Edward Hirsch / Poet
Religion
Doe
Giving
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I love the leisurely amplitude, the spaciousness, of taking a walk, of heading somewhere, anywhere, on foot. I love the sheer adventure of it: setting out and taking off.
Edward Hirsch / Poet
Adventure
Setting
Sheer
Foot
Heading
Leisurely
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Someone who's awake in the middle of the night is a soul consciousness when everyone else is asleep, and that creates a feeling of solitude in poetry that I very much like.
Edward Hirsch / Poet
Awake
Consciousness
Solitude
Asleep
Creates
Everyone Else
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James Salter is a consummate storyteller. His manners are precise and elegant; he has a splendid New York accent; he runs his hands through his gray hair and laughs boyishly.
Edward Hirsch / Poet
New York
Elegant
Gray
Gray Hair
Manners
Precise
Splendid
Accent
Consummate
James
Laughs
Runs
York
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There's been no poet, no great poet in the history of poetry who hasn't also been a great reader of poetry. This is sometimes distressing to my students when I tell them this.
Edward Hirsch / Poet
Poet
Sometimes
Students
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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 / Poet
Bottles
Ideas
Mean
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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 / Poet
Future
Reader
Becomes
Bottle
Idea
Literary
Towards
Opens
Poem
Some
Sent
Text
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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 / Poet
Teacher
Grandfather
School
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But, that was the beginning, though I didn't start writing until I was in high school and when I was in high school I really began to write poetry with great energy and enthusiasm.
Edward Hirsch / Poet
Energy
School
Writing
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Our culture has become increasingly intolerant of that acute sorrow, that intense mental anguish and deep remorse which may be defined as grief. We want to medicate such sorrow away.
Edward Hirsch / Poet
Anguish
Defined
Grief
Intense
Remorse
Sorrow
Acute
Increasingly
Intolerant
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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 / Poet
Different
Speech
Use
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Edward Hirsch Quotes - Page 2

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