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Come, Thief
A revelatory, indispensable collection of poems from Jane Hirshfield that centers on beauty, time, and the full embrace of an existence that time cannot help but steal from our arms.
Hirshfield is unsurpassed in her ability to sink into a moment’s essence and exchange something of herself with its finite music—and then, in seemingly simple, inevitable words, to deliver that exchange to us in poems that vibrate with form and expression perfectly united. Hirshfield’s poems of discovery, acknowledgment of the difficult, and praise turn always toward deepening comprehension. Here we encounter the stealth of feeling’s arrival (“as some strings, untouched, / sound when a near one is speaking. / So it was when love slipped inside us”), an anatomy of solitude (“wrong solitude vinegars the soul, / right solitude oils it”), a reflection on perishability and the sweetness its acceptance invites into our midst (“How suddenly then / the strange happiness took me, / like a man with strong hands and strong mouth”), and a muscular, unblindfolded awareness of our shared political and planetary fate.
To read these startlingly true poems is to find our own feelings eloquently ensnared. Whether delving into intimately familiar moments or bringing forward some experience until now outside words, Hirshfield finds for each face of our lives its metamorphosing portrait, its particular, memorable, singing and singular name.
Love in August
White moths
against the screen
in August darkness.
Some clamor
in envy.
Some spread large
as two hands
of a thief
who wants to put
back in your cupboard
the long-taken silver.
Hirshfield is unsurpassed in her ability to sink into a moment’s essence and exchange something of herself with its finite music—and then, in seemingly simple, inevitable words, to deliver that exchange to us in poems that vibrate with form and expression perfectly united. Hirshfield’s poems of discovery, acknowledgment of the difficult, and praise turn always toward deepening comprehension. Here we encounter the stealth of feeling’s arrival (“as some strings, untouched, / sound when a near one is speaking. / So it was when love slipped inside us”), an anatomy of solitude (“wrong solitude vinegars the soul, / right solitude oils it”), a reflection on perishability and the sweetness its acceptance invites into our midst (“How suddenly then / the strange happiness took me, / like a man with strong hands and strong mouth”), and a muscular, unblindfolded awareness of our shared political and planetary fate.
To read these startlingly true poems is to find our own feelings eloquently ensnared. Whether delving into intimately familiar moments or bringing forward some experience until now outside words, Hirshfield finds for each face of our lives its metamorphosing portrait, its particular, memorable, singing and singular name.
Love in August
White moths
against the screen
in August darkness.
Some clamor
in envy.
Some spread large
as two hands
of a thief
who wants to put
back in your cupboard
the long-taken silver.
112 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2011
46 people are currently reading
879 people want to read
About the author
Jane Hirshfield
71 books619 followersJane Hirshfield is the author of nine collections of poetry, including the forthcoming Ledger (Knopf, March 2020), The Beauty (Knopf, 2015), longlisted for the National Book Award, Come Thief (Knopf, August 23, 2011), After (HarperCollins, 2006), which was named a “Best Book of 2006” by The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, and England’s Financial Times and shortlisted for England’s T.S. Eliot Award; and Given Sugar, Given Salt (finalist for the 2001 National Book Critics Circle Award); as well as two now-classic books of essays, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry and Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World. She has also edited and co-translated three books collecting the work of women poets from the distant past, and one e-book on Basho and the development of haiku, The Heart of Haiku. Hirshfield’s other honors include The Poetry Center Book Award, the California Book Award, fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the 40th Annual Distinguished Achievement Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets, an honor previously received by Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, and William Carlos Williams. Her work has been featured in ten editions of The Best American Poems and appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Times Literary Supplement/TLS, The American Poetry Review, Poetry, The New York Review of Books, Orion, McSweeney’s, and elsewhere. Hirshfield’s poems have also been featured many times on Garrison Keillor’s Writers Almanac as well as two Bill Moyers’ PBS television specials. She has presented her poems and taught at festivals and universities throughout the U.S., in China, Japan, the Middle East, the U.K., Poland, and Ireland. In 2019, she was elected into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
Hirshfield's appearance schedule can be found at:
Hirshfield's appearance schedule can be found at:
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 72 reviews
March 27, 2012
This is the kind of poetry collection that presents a real problem for me. I can see that these poems are well-crafted, sensitive, perceptive, and thoughtful. I can tell that the author has a good ear for the language and I suspect that she is a deeply kind and spiritual person who is acutely alive to the world around her. I can also predict that I will have completely forgotten about this book approximately seventeen minutes after I finish typing this review. Sigh.
August 10, 2019
THE PRESENT
I wanted to give you something—
no stone, clay, bracelet,
no edible leaf could pass through.
Even a molecule’s fragrance by then too large.
Giving had been taken, as you soon would be.
Still, I offered the puffs of air shaped to meaning.
They remained air.
I offered memory on memory,
but what is memory that dies with the fallible inks?
I offered apology, sorrow, longing. I offered anger.
How fine is the mesh of death. You can almost see through it.
I stood on one side of the present, you stood on the other.
COME, THIEF
The mandarin silence of windows before their view,
like guards who nod to every visitor,
“Pass.”
“Come, thief,”
the path to the doorway agrees.
A fire requires its own conflagration.
As birth does. As love does.
Saying to time to the end, “Dear one, enter.”
I wanted to give you something—
no stone, clay, bracelet,
no edible leaf could pass through.
Even a molecule’s fragrance by then too large.
Giving had been taken, as you soon would be.
Still, I offered the puffs of air shaped to meaning.
They remained air.
I offered memory on memory,
but what is memory that dies with the fallible inks?
I offered apology, sorrow, longing. I offered anger.
How fine is the mesh of death. You can almost see through it.
I stood on one side of the present, you stood on the other.
COME, THIEF
The mandarin silence of windows before their view,
like guards who nod to every visitor,
“Pass.”
“Come, thief,”
the path to the doorway agrees.
A fire requires its own conflagration.
As birth does. As love does.
Saying to time to the end, “Dear one, enter.”
November 29, 2011
Really enjoyed this. Probably my favorite of Hirshfield's collections (at least of what I've read, which is not all). I'm partial to the very short ones that just glitter like gems. Here are three of my favorites.
If Truth Is the Lure, Humans Are Fishes
Under each station of the real,
another glimmers.
And so the love of false-bottomed drawers
and the salt mines outside Kraków,
going down and down without drowning.
A man harms his wife, his child.
He says, “Here is the reason.”
She says, “Here is the reason.”
The child says nothing,
watching him led away.
If truth is the lure, humans are fishes.
All the fine bones of that eaten-up story,
think about them.
Their salt-cod whiteness on whiteness.
The Cloudy Vase
Past time,
I threw the flowers out,
washed out
the cloudy vase.
How easily
the old clearness
leapt,
like a practiced tiger,
back inside it.
Contentment
I had lived on this earth
more than fifty years
before hearing the sound
of sixteen New Hampshire Reds
settling in before sleep.
Dusk gathered
like a handkerchief
into a pouch o
f clean straw.
But only fifteen
adjusted themselves
on the wooden couch.
One, with more white in her feathers
than the feathers of others,
still wandered outside,
away from the chuckling,
some quiet joke
neither she nor I quite heard.
"The foxes will have you," I told her.
She scratched the ground,
found a late insect to feast on,
set her clipped beak to peck at my shoe.
Reached for, she ran.
Ran from the ramp
I herded her toward as well.
I tried raccoons, then cold.
I tried stew.
She found a fresh seed.
Her legs were white and clean
and appeared very strong.
We ran around the coop
that way a long time,
she seeming delighted, I flapping.
Darkness, not I, brought her in.
Copyright © 2009 Jane Hirshfield All rights reserved
Reprinted at: http://www.versedaily.org/2009/conten...
If Truth Is the Lure, Humans Are Fishes
Under each station of the real,
another glimmers.
And so the love of false-bottomed drawers
and the salt mines outside Kraków,
going down and down without drowning.
A man harms his wife, his child.
He says, “Here is the reason.”
She says, “Here is the reason.”
The child says nothing,
watching him led away.
If truth is the lure, humans are fishes.
All the fine bones of that eaten-up story,
think about them.
Their salt-cod whiteness on whiteness.
The Cloudy Vase
Past time,
I threw the flowers out,
washed out
the cloudy vase.
How easily
the old clearness
leapt,
like a practiced tiger,
back inside it.
Contentment
I had lived on this earth
more than fifty years
before hearing the sound
of sixteen New Hampshire Reds
settling in before sleep.
Dusk gathered
like a handkerchief
into a pouch o
f clean straw.
But only fifteen
adjusted themselves
on the wooden couch.
One, with more white in her feathers
than the feathers of others,
still wandered outside,
away from the chuckling,
some quiet joke
neither she nor I quite heard.
"The foxes will have you," I told her.
She scratched the ground,
found a late insect to feast on,
set her clipped beak to peck at my shoe.
Reached for, she ran.
Ran from the ramp
I herded her toward as well.
I tried raccoons, then cold.
I tried stew.
She found a fresh seed.
Her legs were white and clean
and appeared very strong.
We ran around the coop
that way a long time,
she seeming delighted, I flapping.
Darkness, not I, brought her in.
Copyright © 2009 Jane Hirshfield All rights reserved
Reprinted at: http://www.versedaily.org/2009/conten...
November 7, 2011
Jane Hirshfield is my absolute favorite contemporary poet. And this most recent book is both wise and gorgeous. Her work seems to be becoming quieter, more transparent--and at the same time the poems are still mysterious and strange (in the best possible way), startling and beautiful. I love and admire the way they take in both the very small and daily (cats, sweaters, cups of coffee) and the very large (death, silk roads, Anna Karenina, war, torture)... and I especially love the way they don't distinguish between large and small (though I'm obviously doing so here). Everything, in her world, is equally deserving of her loving and scrupulous attention. And that includes everything of the inner, emotional world, as well as the outer world of doorknobs and lichens. The poems look so carefully and honestly at a huge range of feeling; reading them made me feel companioned, supported, less alone in ways that poems don't often manage to do, I think because Hirshfield's emotional range IS so broad, because she is accepting, even tender, toward the more difficult feelings these poems take on. I read this book in a day, but I could easily have spent hours on each of the poems, even the smallest ones--looking at how carefully they are made, immersing myself in that amazing sense of mystery-and-transparency.
October 23, 2014
It opens with my favorite poem of the collection, French Horn, which wraps with these lovely lines:
Let others claps.
These two, their ears still ringing, hear nothing.
Not the the shouts of bravo, bravo,
not the timpanic clamor inside their bodies.
As the plum's blossoms do not hear the bee
not taste themselves turned into storable honey
by that sumptuous disturbance.
Nothing that comes ever reaches quite that level of piquancy again, but it is still so laced with little treasures that it would be hard to call it a disappointment. Highlights include When Your Life Looks Back, Seawater Stiffens Cloth, The Cloudy Vase, Three-Legged Blues and the slightly too-precious A Blessing for Wedding.
Let others claps.
These two, their ears still ringing, hear nothing.
Not the the shouts of bravo, bravo,
not the timpanic clamor inside their bodies.
As the plum's blossoms do not hear the bee
not taste themselves turned into storable honey
by that sumptuous disturbance.
Nothing that comes ever reaches quite that level of piquancy again, but it is still so laced with little treasures that it would be hard to call it a disappointment. Highlights include When Your Life Looks Back, Seawater Stiffens Cloth, The Cloudy Vase, Three-Legged Blues and the slightly too-precious A Blessing for Wedding.
May 8, 2012
This is Jane Hirshfield's best book. I can go back to it again and again and each time find something new, whether it's a fresh way of looking at the world or just sheer admiration of her spare but expansive style and incisive eye. I've also happily reviewed it for Poetry Review.
January 28, 2023
"There is something that waits inside us, / a nearness that fissures, that fishes" (Of Yield and Abandon, 19).
Jane Hirshfield possesses a keen awareness of the weight of the unsaid (i.e. "The Conversation") and the boundary lines and distance between ideals. This collection in particular feels infused with a Japanese-inspired tendency towards brevity and balance. I love how the author deposits wisdom with such gentle precision: "The heart's actions / are neither the sentence nor its reprieve" (48).
One of my favorite incandescent poems of Jane's is included in this collection:
"Near even a candle, the visible heat. / So it is with a person in love: / buying bread, paying a bridge toll. / You too have been that woman, / the one who is looked at and the one who looks. / Each lowers the eyes before it, without knowing why" (The Visible Heat, 33).
I love the way that Jane can write about plums, bells, and fish and make it all truly transcendent. Among these poems, I felt moved by "Sheep," "The Decision," and "The Promise." I adore the essence of the title, how a doorway will beckon, "come, thief." To invite another in is to invite the potential of destruction, to obliterate the past balance of things, and to welcome in the promise of love. Indeed, Jane, "how fragile we are, between the few good moments" (Vinegar and Oil, 12).
"It is the work of feeling / to undo expectation. / A black-faced sheep / looks back at you as you pass / and your heart is startled / as if by the shadow once loved. / Neither comforted by this / nor made lonely. / Only remembering / that a self in exile is still a self, / as a bell unstruck for years / is still a bell" (Sheep, 50).
I have a big poetry commission due this weekend, so this was a helpful resource for inspiration. Thank you, Scottish Poetry Library, for saving me once again. And for giving me a gorgeous antique copy of Wordsworth for free! :')
"Back then, what did I know? / The names of subway lines, buses. / How long it took to walk 20 blocks. / Uptown and downtown. / Not north, not south, not you" (For the Lobaria, 40).
Jane Hirshfield possesses a keen awareness of the weight of the unsaid (i.e. "The Conversation") and the boundary lines and distance between ideals. This collection in particular feels infused with a Japanese-inspired tendency towards brevity and balance. I love how the author deposits wisdom with such gentle precision: "The heart's actions / are neither the sentence nor its reprieve" (48).
One of my favorite incandescent poems of Jane's is included in this collection:
"Near even a candle, the visible heat. / So it is with a person in love: / buying bread, paying a bridge toll. / You too have been that woman, / the one who is looked at and the one who looks. / Each lowers the eyes before it, without knowing why" (The Visible Heat, 33).
I love the way that Jane can write about plums, bells, and fish and make it all truly transcendent. Among these poems, I felt moved by "Sheep," "The Decision," and "The Promise." I adore the essence of the title, how a doorway will beckon, "come, thief." To invite another in is to invite the potential of destruction, to obliterate the past balance of things, and to welcome in the promise of love. Indeed, Jane, "how fragile we are, between the few good moments" (Vinegar and Oil, 12).
"It is the work of feeling / to undo expectation. / A black-faced sheep / looks back at you as you pass / and your heart is startled / as if by the shadow once loved. / Neither comforted by this / nor made lonely. / Only remembering / that a self in exile is still a self, / as a bell unstruck for years / is still a bell" (Sheep, 50).
I have a big poetry commission due this weekend, so this was a helpful resource for inspiration. Thank you, Scottish Poetry Library, for saving me once again. And for giving me a gorgeous antique copy of Wordsworth for free! :')
"Back then, what did I know? / The names of subway lines, buses. / How long it took to walk 20 blocks. / Uptown and downtown. / Not north, not south, not you" (For the Lobaria, 40).
Read
January 1, 2018Well, we didn’t like this at all but possibly the most fun we’ve ever had at a poetry reading. Tiny wrists and puzzles.
Read
April 27, 2012"Although the range of material and features of style are essentially that of her earlier work—that is, not developmentally new—Jane Hirshfield’s latest book of poetry nevertheless offers some of her best poems to date." - Fred Dings, The University of South Carolina
This book was reviewed in the May/June 2012 issue of World Literature Today. You can access the full review by visiting our website: http://worldliteraturetoday.com/2012/...
This book was reviewed in the May/June 2012 issue of World Literature Today. You can access the full review by visiting our website: http://worldliteraturetoday.com/2012/...
January 15, 2015
Wonderful new collection of poems by a deft and thoughtful observer of modern life.
March 14, 2019
Oh, Jane, I adore thee.
November 12, 2021
The language, the images, the situations in these poems seemed to me at times too obscure and at other times too pedantic. I had trouble connecting to these pieces. Got about 1/4 of the way through and decided to switch to the next poetry book on my list.
October 24, 2023
Some of the poems spoke to me like no other.
December 27, 2025
Favorite poems: Vinegar and Oil, Bruises, Alzheimer’s, Chapel, “Haofon Rece Swealg”, Pompeii
April 16, 2014
Turns out, I don't think I can fall in love with most of Hirshfield's poetry if this book is any indication. I read some, skimmed some, read first stanzas of some. (Poetry is not meant to be skimmed or read in part, but most just didn't pull me in.) However! The amazing beauty and power of this poem moved the book to 4 stars for me:
This, your life had said, its only pronoun.
Here, your life had said, its only house.
Let, your life had said, its only order.
And did you have a choice in this? You did -
Sleeping and waking,
the horses around you, the mountains around you,
the buildings with their tall, hydraulic shafts.
Those of your own kind around you -
A few times, you stood on your head.
A few times, you chose not to be frightened.
A few times, you held another beyond any measure.
A few times, you found yourself held beyond any measure.
Mortal, your life will say,
as if tasting something delicious, as if in envy.
Your immortal life will say this, as it is leaving.
- From "When Your Life Looks Back" (p 87-88)
I also liked "The Promise" (p 22), Green-striped Melons (p 52), A Roomless Door (p 75), and I Ran Out Naked In The sun (p 86) ("I wanted more I / shouted More / and who could blame me / who could blame").
This, your life had said, its only pronoun.
Here, your life had said, its only house.
Let, your life had said, its only order.
And did you have a choice in this? You did -
Sleeping and waking,
the horses around you, the mountains around you,
the buildings with their tall, hydraulic shafts.
Those of your own kind around you -
A few times, you stood on your head.
A few times, you chose not to be frightened.
A few times, you held another beyond any measure.
A few times, you found yourself held beyond any measure.
Mortal, your life will say,
as if tasting something delicious, as if in envy.
Your immortal life will say this, as it is leaving.
- From "When Your Life Looks Back" (p 87-88)
I also liked "The Promise" (p 22), Green-striped Melons (p 52), A Roomless Door (p 75), and I Ran Out Naked In The sun (p 86) ("I wanted more I / shouted More / and who could blame me / who could blame").
February 27, 2013
Jane Hirshfield
Come, Thief
(New York: Knopf, 2011)
Poet Jane Hirshfield’s new book, Come, Thief, reaches from stillness to the bounding life. As she writes in “The Tongue Says Loneliness,” “this life is not a gate, but the horse plunging through it.” The poems turn in a variety of directions, even at one point, toward Pompeii. Through a variety of forms, Hirshfield asks that readers attend their own worlds to observe both the natural and the manmade in order to learn about humanity. We’re here, she offers, and so is everything else. The poem “Bamboo” ends perfectly on that note: “Do not think it unchanged, this world you are leaving.”
—Chloe Yelena Miller
Come, Thief, was reviewed in The Literary Review. "The Lives of Saints" Fall 2011
Come, Thief
(New York: Knopf, 2011)
Poet Jane Hirshfield’s new book, Come, Thief, reaches from stillness to the bounding life. As she writes in “The Tongue Says Loneliness,” “this life is not a gate, but the horse plunging through it.” The poems turn in a variety of directions, even at one point, toward Pompeii. Through a variety of forms, Hirshfield asks that readers attend their own worlds to observe both the natural and the manmade in order to learn about humanity. We’re here, she offers, and so is everything else. The poem “Bamboo” ends perfectly on that note: “Do not think it unchanged, this world you are leaving.”
—Chloe Yelena Miller
Come, Thief, was reviewed in The Literary Review. "The Lives of Saints" Fall 2011
January 28, 2016
For the most part I love her poetry. I have read this, but know I'll be re-reading various poems in it periodically. Every once in a while I find a line that doesn't work for me. Here's an example of a great line and then ones I don't understand:
From Big-Leaf Maple Standing Over Its Own Reflection:
The members of one Siberian tribe
spoke of good things in metaphor only:
"The god are jealous, but stupid," they kindly explained.
I love that thought! But just before that is a stanza that starts:
"How many feet of skim milk does it take
to shingle a lamppost?"
My friend's teacher would ask him.
"Lightning, like luck, lands somewhere,"
my friend would reply.
The answer fits many things; it's the question I really don't understand. But that doesn't wipe out the marvelousness of jealous but stupid gods.
From Big-Leaf Maple Standing Over Its Own Reflection:
The members of one Siberian tribe
spoke of good things in metaphor only:
"The god are jealous, but stupid," they kindly explained.
I love that thought! But just before that is a stanza that starts:
"How many feet of skim milk does it take
to shingle a lamppost?"
My friend's teacher would ask him.
"Lightning, like luck, lands somewhere,"
my friend would reply.
The answer fits many things; it's the question I really don't understand. But that doesn't wipe out the marvelousness of jealous but stupid gods.
August 10, 2013
A great deal more should be said about this collection than this will say. Poems like this are not just 'tiny universes' self-contained in a network of tight coherence. They've taught themselves to be 'tiny Asian universes'.
By which I mean this. To the English language ear, translations of Chinese and Japanese poetry take on the sense that a film gives when periodic frames are deliberately excised and the eye skips and the mind works more to fill in what, naturalistically, should be there. Or take on the risk when a rock climber must gamble his reach for the handhold that isn't felt but that has to be there.
In straining, we come to a fuller completion.
By which I mean this. To the English language ear, translations of Chinese and Japanese poetry take on the sense that a film gives when periodic frames are deliberately excised and the eye skips and the mind works more to fill in what, naturalistically, should be there. Or take on the risk when a rock climber must gamble his reach for the handhold that isn't felt but that has to be there.
In straining, we come to a fuller completion.
July 25, 2015
I do like Jane Hirshfield's poems. They are spiritual, but in the grounded, undogmatic sense of mindfulness. They take the stuff of everyday life and direct our inner gaze beyond the surface, and all without overwrought language or impossible to decipher allusions. There is a bit of wry humor in her mostly short, sometimes terse, lines.
There are a handful of pieces in this collection that do not work for me. I got the feeling a few times that I was being hammered with similes or aphorisms. However, this "problem" is probably a matter of taste more than flawed writing, as Hirshfield is quite adept with both devices.
There are a handful of pieces in this collection that do not work for me. I got the feeling a few times that I was being hammered with similes or aphorisms. However, this "problem" is probably a matter of taste more than flawed writing, as Hirshfield is quite adept with both devices.
December 26, 2013
I'm still figuring out what kinds of poetry I like, but some of this was not what I was looking for. Many of the poems were excellent. Several of the poems early in the volume were a bit disjointed, and I prefer poems that are tighter and less gestured.
I really liked "When Your Life Looks Back," "A Small-Sized Mystery," "The Egg Had Frozen, An Accident," and "All the Difficult Hours and Minutes."
I really liked "When Your Life Looks Back," "A Small-Sized Mystery," "The Egg Had Frozen, An Accident," and "All the Difficult Hours and Minutes."
October 21, 2011
Hirshfield is one of my favorite living poets. This collection is inspiring and enlightening. She has a keen command of our language and is a master of imagination. There is a profoundness in every day events and Hirshfield captures it line by line. I will be reading this treasure again and again. Delicious!
April 13, 2016
Read for National Poetry Month 2016.
"Think assailable thoughts, or be lonely." (from Sentencings )
I appreciate this poet's ability to show the sacred or spiritual in common emotions and normal human events. That she does so with simple, everyday language, is amazing to me. She shows the transcendent without using transcendent imagery.
Can't wait to read more.
"Think assailable thoughts, or be lonely." (from Sentencings )
I appreciate this poet's ability to show the sacred or spiritual in common emotions and normal human events. That she does so with simple, everyday language, is amazing to me. She shows the transcendent without using transcendent imagery.
Can't wait to read more.
September 26, 2011
Hirshfield's poems are as open, inviting, observant, and haunting as ever.
Learn more about the poet in her interview on Words With Writers: http://wordswithwriters.com/2011/12/0...
Learn more about the poet in her interview on Words With Writers: http://wordswithwriters.com/2011/12/0...
April 4, 2015
"A life is shaped by what it holds or makes. I make these words for what they can't replace." What a voice! What insight! I adored this entire collection. Poetry! I will be reading more from Hirshfield as quickly as I can get my hands on it. YES!!!
July 31, 2012
These poems are a hike in the mountains with high peaks like "French Horn" and "When Your Life Looks Back." All are meditations,sparer than I am accustomed to in her work; they invite re-reading. I am especially drawn to "The Pear," 'Washing Doorknobs," and "Seawater Stiffens Cloth."
February 17, 2013
More difficult than earlier books of her work. I'm going to have to read through these poems again. Not necessarily a bad thing, but a surprise. Much work on aging and grief. As one might expect. Very inspiring -- makes me want to write my own poems, with not all work does these days.
May 11, 2015
This book is at once dense and sparse, deep and thick. Each poem captivates with its rich images of passing through, of inviting the thief inside, of welcoming the changes that come with loss, love, and life.
November 20, 2011
I'm not writing here - but if you're interested, go to Kasey Jued's review of this book. I'd like to just quote her review in full.
March 9, 2014
Certainly one of Jane Hirshfield's finest collections---how she shows the everyday to be both evanescent and numinous. How she makes the tragic and comic in our lives from simple words and images.
October 4, 2016
"A day is vast.
Until noon.
Then it's over."
this book is great, jane hirshfield is the best.
Until noon.
Then it's over."
this book is great, jane hirshfield is the best.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 72 reviews