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Given Sugar, Given Salt
Given Sugar, Given Salt : Poems by Jane Hirshfield. Perennial Library,2001
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First published January 1, 2001
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About the author
Jane Hirshfield
70 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 59 reviews
December 17, 2018
There are so many feelings I have for this book, new ones with virtually every poem, but the essence of each seems to be my amazement at the way Hirshfield uses every day language and manners of speaking to express such truths of every day life. At times I felt as if she had somehow known my experiences while at others I sensed she was seeing the grand scheme for us all. Perhaps that’s a bit presumptuous. If so, it would be on my part, not Hirshfield, who does not appear to make any such claims.
I have marked several poems to cite in this review, too many in fact. This will be the difficult part, choosing.
Rebus
You work with what you are given,
the red clay of grief,
the black clay of stubbornness going on after.
Clay that tastes of care or carelessness,
clay that smells of the bottoms of rivers or dust.
Each thought is a life you have lived or failed to live,
each word is a dish you have eaten or left on the table.
There are honeys so bitter
no one would willingly choose to take them.
The clay takes them: honey of weariness, honey of vanity,
honey of cruelty, fear.
This rebus—slip and stubbornness,
bottom of river, my own consumed life—
when will I learn to read it
plainly, slowly, uncolored by hope or desire?
Not to understand it, only to see.
As water given sugar sweetens' given salt grows salty,
we become our choices.
Each YES, each NO continues,
this one a ladder, that one an anvil or cup.
The ladder leans into its darkness.
The anvil leans into its silence.
The cup sits empty.
How can I enter this question the clay has asked?
I may return to include more examples from the poetry. It’s so difficult to select which one or ones mean the most to me; I have a feeling that may change over time, even each time I pick up the book.
Needless to say, if you read poetry, I strongly recommend this. If you aren’t sure, I suggest giving it a try.
I have marked several poems to cite in this review, too many in fact. This will be the difficult part, choosing.
Rebus
You work with what you are given,
the red clay of grief,
the black clay of stubbornness going on after.
Clay that tastes of care or carelessness,
clay that smells of the bottoms of rivers or dust.
Each thought is a life you have lived or failed to live,
each word is a dish you have eaten or left on the table.
There are honeys so bitter
no one would willingly choose to take them.
The clay takes them: honey of weariness, honey of vanity,
honey of cruelty, fear.
This rebus—slip and stubbornness,
bottom of river, my own consumed life—
when will I learn to read it
plainly, slowly, uncolored by hope or desire?
Not to understand it, only to see.
As water given sugar sweetens' given salt grows salty,
we become our choices.
Each YES, each NO continues,
this one a ladder, that one an anvil or cup.
The ladder leans into its darkness.
The anvil leans into its silence.
The cup sits empty.
How can I enter this question the clay has asked?
I may return to include more examples from the poetry. It’s so difficult to select which one or ones mean the most to me; I have a feeling that may change over time, even each time I pick up the book.
Needless to say, if you read poetry, I strongly recommend this. If you aren’t sure, I suggest giving it a try.
January 26, 2020
Neither a person entirely broken
nor one entirely whole can speak.
In sorrow, pretend to be fearless. In happiness, tremble.
I was not expecting to enjoy this collection so much. Poem after poem, Hirshfield finds wisdom in image. Her insights are often profound, sometimes comforting, and always a pleasure to read.
nor one entirely whole can speak.
In sorrow, pretend to be fearless. In happiness, tremble.
I was not expecting to enjoy this collection so much. Poem after poem, Hirshfield finds wisdom in image. Her insights are often profound, sometimes comforting, and always a pleasure to read.
January 13, 2021
I read the poems of Given Sugar, Given Salt over a period of a month, at first in small bites - no more than three or four a day, usually before the sun came up, reading aloud in a still house - but today, the most beautiful day of the year here in Coastal Carolina (mid-70s, clear blue sky, magnolia blossoms when I look up), spending the afternoon on the front porch reading, and rereading, the last half or so of the collection.
In commenting on what I've read, I'll try to be concise. I'll try not to get carried away. Or too solipsistic. I'll try to stick to the work at hand and how it works on me.
Because that's so of all poetry isn't it? It works on us, moves us, one way or the other. And when it doesn't, that's how it does, for you.
But let me begin by saying I came to this book, many of the poems of which I'd known from friends and libraries and the Internet, as an admirer of Jane Hirshfield's work. I knew something about her story as well, and particularly that she's a long-time practitioner of Zen Buddhism, which fact, and her own comments on Zen in several interviews, along with my own background (in East Asian affairs), helped me understand the calm spirtuality of her poems, her consistent, and consistently surprising, perspective, the reverence she conveys for all being and life, and the gentle deconstructions of common perception that mark her poetry.
The great jazz writer Whitney Balliett called jazz "the sound of surprise." In my reading, that's an apt description of how Jane Hirshfield works on me: continually surprising when I least expect it. Drawing cosmic conclusions from quotidian matters, literally seeing the universe, not simply the forest, from the trees.
As in "Tree":
It is foolish
to let a young redwood
grow next to a house.
Even in this
one lifetime,
you will have to choose.
That great calm being,
this clutter of soup pots and books--
Already the first branch tips brush at the window.
Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.
Simple, yet with a single word, explodes, surprisingly, into profundity, into another layer of being. Who has an eye like this, what M.S. Merwin has described as Hirshfield's "remarkable precision of observation and revealed feeling"?
I could go on, and on, with examples from literally dozens of poems from this 69-poem collection. Most are no more than a page. A handful go on for three pages. Hirshfield writes with an economy and precision that might make one think she's written and translated and anthologized haiku or other terse Japanese forms of verse. Well, she has.
Moreover, without being the slightest bit didactic or ostentatiously (as in "show-offily") self-referential (but, of course, she's deeply self-referential), Hirshfield is a philospher of language, of language's relation to perception, of perception's relation to observation or other sensing, of grappling with how a poem means. She is the best of all teachers - unobtrusive, gently nudging, encouraging her readers to follow along with her on an adventure of discovery that might at some point surprise.
The collection concludes with two titanic poems - almost recapitulations of all the foregoing: "Ink," one of the longer 3-page works, and "Metempsychosis," neither of which I want to discuss, because my reading might not be your reading, and because each is so surprising, yet so organically *right*, that I'm loathe to steal Hirshfield's thunder and your own pleasure of discovery.
These are poems to revisit, poems about identity, and discovery, and impermanence, and life, and love, and quiddity - the "thingness" of things - and the great chain of being, which in Hirshfield's eye is much less hierarchical and consequently more valuable to us and thus worthy of greater attention and respect.
I began by saying I was an admirer. Now I'm Jane Hirshfield's student. Literature, and especially poetry, compels a response. If you're mystified after one or two readings, you need to decide whether you're going to work on a poem or simply turn the page. Or place the book back on the shelf. Or toss it across the room. Jane Hirshfield is worth my time and is my reigning "living poet I most enjoy reading." She's also a great teacher and humanist, and I'm looking forward to continuing a journey with her, literary, to be sure, but also very human, humane, and...filled with surprise.
In commenting on what I've read, I'll try to be concise. I'll try not to get carried away. Or too solipsistic. I'll try to stick to the work at hand and how it works on me.
Because that's so of all poetry isn't it? It works on us, moves us, one way or the other. And when it doesn't, that's how it does, for you.
But let me begin by saying I came to this book, many of the poems of which I'd known from friends and libraries and the Internet, as an admirer of Jane Hirshfield's work. I knew something about her story as well, and particularly that she's a long-time practitioner of Zen Buddhism, which fact, and her own comments on Zen in several interviews, along with my own background (in East Asian affairs), helped me understand the calm spirtuality of her poems, her consistent, and consistently surprising, perspective, the reverence she conveys for all being and life, and the gentle deconstructions of common perception that mark her poetry.
The great jazz writer Whitney Balliett called jazz "the sound of surprise." In my reading, that's an apt description of how Jane Hirshfield works on me: continually surprising when I least expect it. Drawing cosmic conclusions from quotidian matters, literally seeing the universe, not simply the forest, from the trees.
As in "Tree":
It is foolish
to let a young redwood
grow next to a house.
Even in this
one lifetime,
you will have to choose.
That great calm being,
this clutter of soup pots and books--
Already the first branch tips brush at the window.
Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.
Simple, yet with a single word, explodes, surprisingly, into profundity, into another layer of being. Who has an eye like this, what M.S. Merwin has described as Hirshfield's "remarkable precision of observation and revealed feeling"?
I could go on, and on, with examples from literally dozens of poems from this 69-poem collection. Most are no more than a page. A handful go on for three pages. Hirshfield writes with an economy and precision that might make one think she's written and translated and anthologized haiku or other terse Japanese forms of verse. Well, she has.
Moreover, without being the slightest bit didactic or ostentatiously (as in "show-offily") self-referential (but, of course, she's deeply self-referential), Hirshfield is a philospher of language, of language's relation to perception, of perception's relation to observation or other sensing, of grappling with how a poem means. She is the best of all teachers - unobtrusive, gently nudging, encouraging her readers to follow along with her on an adventure of discovery that might at some point surprise.
The collection concludes with two titanic poems - almost recapitulations of all the foregoing: "Ink," one of the longer 3-page works, and "Metempsychosis," neither of which I want to discuss, because my reading might not be your reading, and because each is so surprising, yet so organically *right*, that I'm loathe to steal Hirshfield's thunder and your own pleasure of discovery.
These are poems to revisit, poems about identity, and discovery, and impermanence, and life, and love, and quiddity - the "thingness" of things - and the great chain of being, which in Hirshfield's eye is much less hierarchical and consequently more valuable to us and thus worthy of greater attention and respect.
I began by saying I was an admirer. Now I'm Jane Hirshfield's student. Literature, and especially poetry, compels a response. If you're mystified after one or two readings, you need to decide whether you're going to work on a poem or simply turn the page. Or place the book back on the shelf. Or toss it across the room. Jane Hirshfield is worth my time and is my reigning "living poet I most enjoy reading." She's also a great teacher and humanist, and I'm looking forward to continuing a journey with her, literary, to be sure, but also very human, humane, and...filled with surprise.
April 21, 2014
Given sugar, given salt, what will we do? What will you do? What will I do? Have we not already been given the sweet, the more complicated, invigorating salt? Who chooses one over the other, and why contrast these two, and not the bitter and the sweet? There is a song by River City Extension called Something Salty, Something Sweet which is about, well, sex of course, but Hirshfield is after something else. She is again illuminating simple objects like leather, rocks, vaccines, ants, a button, pillows as in ‘Come, Thief’ which I liked, but these were written in 2001, 10 years before the other, and I can tell. My heart and mind definitely weren’t called to like Mr. Garrison Keillor wisely suggested poetry should be able to do and be.
The cover photo bothers me, more than I yet understand: a still life of moldy fruit complicated by a rat and cockroach by Georg Flegel. I had to look at the opened book on my table as I tried to eat mindfully, and it was the bitter to the sweet I was trying to find in spring fresh ripe pears and blueberries and raw nuts and seeds, and might have ruined the poems for me. I get it, it’s a Annie Dillard theme that I absolutely understand: there is death in the mix, a thousand ways beauty is eclipsed by decay, rot, ugliness.
So many of the poems might be more considered the bitter rather than the salty compared to the sweet. I am not sure how the cockroach can be considered salty, which to me, means adding zest, spice, intricacy, earthiness. Dimension, flavor. Not all good, sometimes too much salt stings. But the salt is of earth, of the ocean, of our bodies, tears, sweat. The cockroach is just gross.
But here’s what I tend to do when given salty, when given sweet, when given bitter:
find the beauty.
Lines:
There are openings in our lives/of which we know nothing. (the envoy, about a rat and a snake)
Does a poem enlarge the world/or only our idea of the world?//How do you take one from the other,/I lied, or did not lie,/in answer. (mathematics)
It is foolish/ to let a young redwood/ grow next to a house.//Even in this lifetime, you will have to choose. (tree)
There is no substance /that does not carry one inside it,/hands spinning/as the Fates were said to do. (clock)
Some stories last many centuries,/others only a moment./All alter over that lifetime like beach-glass,/grow distant and more beautiful with salt.
There is a stage in us where each being, each thing, is a mirror.
I would like not minding, whatever travels my heart./To follow it all the way into leaf-form, bark-furl, root-touch, /and then keep walking, unimaginably further.
(metempsychosis)
Poems:
Rebus
You work with what you are given,
the red clay of grief,
the black clay of stubbornness going on after.
Clay that tastes of care or carelessness,
clay that smells of the bottoms of rivers or dust.
Each thought is a life you have lived or failed to live,
each word is a dish you have eaten or left on the table.
There are honeys so bitter
no one would willingly choose to take them.
The clay takes them: honey of weariness, honey of vanity,
honey of cruelty, fear.
This rebus - slip and stubbornness,
bottom of river, my own consumed life -
when will I learn to read it
plainly, slowly, uncolored by hope or desire?
Not to understand it, only to see.
As water given sugar sweetens, given salt grows salty,
we become our choices.
Each yes, each no continues,
this one a ladder, that one an anvil or cup.
The ladder leans into its darkness.
The anvil leans into its silence.
The cup sits empty.
How can I enter this question the clay has asked?
Poem With Two Endings
Say “death” and the whole room freezes–
even the couches stop moving,
even the lamps.
Like a squirrel suddenly aware it is being looked at.
Say the word continuously,
and things begin to go forward.
Your life takes on
the jerky texture of an old film strip.
Continue saying it, hold it moment after moment inside the mouth,
it becomes another syllable.
A shopping mall swirls around the corpse of a beetle.
Death is voracious, it swallows all the living.
Life is voracious, it swallows all the dead.
neither is ever satisfied, neither is ever filled,
each swallows and swallows the world.
The grip of life is as strong as the grip of death.
(but the vanished, the vanished beloved, o where?)
The cover photo bothers me, more than I yet understand: a still life of moldy fruit complicated by a rat and cockroach by Georg Flegel. I had to look at the opened book on my table as I tried to eat mindfully, and it was the bitter to the sweet I was trying to find in spring fresh ripe pears and blueberries and raw nuts and seeds, and might have ruined the poems for me. I get it, it’s a Annie Dillard theme that I absolutely understand: there is death in the mix, a thousand ways beauty is eclipsed by decay, rot, ugliness.
So many of the poems might be more considered the bitter rather than the salty compared to the sweet. I am not sure how the cockroach can be considered salty, which to me, means adding zest, spice, intricacy, earthiness. Dimension, flavor. Not all good, sometimes too much salt stings. But the salt is of earth, of the ocean, of our bodies, tears, sweat. The cockroach is just gross.
But here’s what I tend to do when given salty, when given sweet, when given bitter:
find the beauty.
Lines:
There are openings in our lives/of which we know nothing. (the envoy, about a rat and a snake)
Does a poem enlarge the world/or only our idea of the world?//How do you take one from the other,/I lied, or did not lie,/in answer. (mathematics)
It is foolish/ to let a young redwood/ grow next to a house.//Even in this lifetime, you will have to choose. (tree)
There is no substance /that does not carry one inside it,/hands spinning/as the Fates were said to do. (clock)
Some stories last many centuries,/others only a moment./All alter over that lifetime like beach-glass,/grow distant and more beautiful with salt.
There is a stage in us where each being, each thing, is a mirror.
I would like not minding, whatever travels my heart./To follow it all the way into leaf-form, bark-furl, root-touch, /and then keep walking, unimaginably further.
(metempsychosis)
Poems:
Rebus
You work with what you are given,
the red clay of grief,
the black clay of stubbornness going on after.
Clay that tastes of care or carelessness,
clay that smells of the bottoms of rivers or dust.
Each thought is a life you have lived or failed to live,
each word is a dish you have eaten or left on the table.
There are honeys so bitter
no one would willingly choose to take them.
The clay takes them: honey of weariness, honey of vanity,
honey of cruelty, fear.
This rebus - slip and stubbornness,
bottom of river, my own consumed life -
when will I learn to read it
plainly, slowly, uncolored by hope or desire?
Not to understand it, only to see.
As water given sugar sweetens, given salt grows salty,
we become our choices.
Each yes, each no continues,
this one a ladder, that one an anvil or cup.
The ladder leans into its darkness.
The anvil leans into its silence.
The cup sits empty.
How can I enter this question the clay has asked?
Poem With Two Endings
Say “death” and the whole room freezes–
even the couches stop moving,
even the lamps.
Like a squirrel suddenly aware it is being looked at.
Say the word continuously,
and things begin to go forward.
Your life takes on
the jerky texture of an old film strip.
Continue saying it, hold it moment after moment inside the mouth,
it becomes another syllable.
A shopping mall swirls around the corpse of a beetle.
Death is voracious, it swallows all the living.
Life is voracious, it swallows all the dead.
neither is ever satisfied, neither is ever filled,
each swallows and swallows the world.
The grip of life is as strong as the grip of death.
(but the vanished, the vanished beloved, o where?)
April 27, 2008
I read this when I am lost. Hirshfield's careful, quiet words lead me back.
January 6, 2025
"The concealment plainly delights."
It does. In this volume, the secret life of objects and desires flows apart in observation, comes back together in dreams. The poems observe their own imperfections, and in the gaps between stanzas: delight cautious to hear its name.
It does. In this volume, the secret life of objects and desires flows apart in observation, comes back together in dreams. The poems observe their own imperfections, and in the gaps between stanzas: delight cautious to hear its name.
February 26, 2014
I really love the title of this book: "given sugar, given salt." Say it out loud a few times. I know I did while reading it! It's very rhythmic.
I would like to say that Hirshfield's writing was this rhythmic throughout the book - I was really looking forward to more lines like that. But, in reality, the full length of the line is "As water given sugar sweetens, as given salt grows salty." If your work needs to be shortened before finding a suitable title, that's a sign. And, in reality Hirshfield is a clumsy writer. There were many times I was reading these poems, and had to pause and go, "... wait, what?" Hirshfield has a very awkward word choice, especially when it comes to pronouns. It was very hard to follow some poems, because I could not tell what the subjects of specific stanzas were (and I do not think - or at least, I hope - that this was not intended.)
The topics of this collection vary greatly. I picked up on/was most interested in the poems about amorality and sensuality; an example of this is "Button," in which a button is described as something that merely exists and enjoys. I also liked the poems that were about unchanging, unfeeling aspects of life - "Rock" and "Clock." Lastly, I thought the poems that explored the idea that we there are multiples of us - those in our dreams, and our past; these also relate to the great poem "The Silence" which is about how we continue to live on, after dying, through the secrets we've told people.
The beginning of this book wasn't bad, it just wasn't great. It didn't engage me very much. It started to pick up for me around "August Day," until the end of the book. This selection gives me more confidence in Hirshfield, and perhaps I would give her another shot some day.
There were a few terrible poems, here, but they did not dominate. Avoid "Leather," "Elephant Seals, Ano Neuvo Preserve" (this one being the worst of the bunch," and "One Life is Spent, the Other Spends Us."
I would like to say that Hirshfield's writing was this rhythmic throughout the book - I was really looking forward to more lines like that. But, in reality, the full length of the line is "As water given sugar sweetens, as given salt grows salty." If your work needs to be shortened before finding a suitable title, that's a sign. And, in reality Hirshfield is a clumsy writer. There were many times I was reading these poems, and had to pause and go, "... wait, what?" Hirshfield has a very awkward word choice, especially when it comes to pronouns. It was very hard to follow some poems, because I could not tell what the subjects of specific stanzas were (and I do not think - or at least, I hope - that this was not intended.)
The topics of this collection vary greatly. I picked up on/was most interested in the poems about amorality and sensuality; an example of this is "Button," in which a button is described as something that merely exists and enjoys. I also liked the poems that were about unchanging, unfeeling aspects of life - "Rock" and "Clock." Lastly, I thought the poems that explored the idea that we there are multiples of us - those in our dreams, and our past; these also relate to the great poem "The Silence" which is about how we continue to live on, after dying, through the secrets we've told people.
The beginning of this book wasn't bad, it just wasn't great. It didn't engage me very much. It started to pick up for me around "August Day," until the end of the book. This selection gives me more confidence in Hirshfield, and perhaps I would give her another shot some day.
There were a few terrible poems, here, but they did not dominate. Avoid "Leather," "Elephant Seals, Ano Neuvo Preserve" (this one being the worst of the bunch," and "One Life is Spent, the Other Spends Us."
May 12, 2022
favorite:
balance
balance is noticed most when almost failed of-
in an elephant's delicate wavering on her circus stool, for instance,
or that moment
when a ladder starts to tip but steadies back.
there are, too, its mysterious departures.
hours after the dishes are washed and stacked,
a metal bowl clangs to the floor,
the weight of drying water all that altered;
a painting vertical for years
one morning-why?-requires a restoring tap.
you have felt it disappearing
from your own capricious heart-
a restlessness enters, the smallest leaning begins.
already then inevitable,
the full collision,
the life you will describe afterward always as "after."
[other favorites: for horses, horseflies and a scale weighs the outer world in pounds and ounces]
balance
balance is noticed most when almost failed of-
in an elephant's delicate wavering on her circus stool, for instance,
or that moment
when a ladder starts to tip but steadies back.
there are, too, its mysterious departures.
hours after the dishes are washed and stacked,
a metal bowl clangs to the floor,
the weight of drying water all that altered;
a painting vertical for years
one morning-why?-requires a restoring tap.
you have felt it disappearing
from your own capricious heart-
a restlessness enters, the smallest leaning begins.
already then inevitable,
the full collision,
the life you will describe afterward always as "after."
[other favorites: for horses, horseflies and a scale weighs the outer world in pounds and ounces]
January 23, 2024
Given Sugar, Given Salt is American poet, essayist and translator Jane Hirshfield's fifth book of poetry, published in 2001. In Given Sugar Given Salt I find her poetry to be sparse, pared down, clear and luminous. She explores age old themes of the passage of time and aging, identity and death. A student of the Zen tradition, that influence flows throughout the book.
Highlights for me included;
• Red Onion, Cherries, Boiling Potatoes, Milk— p.24
• In Praise of Coldness p.31
• Happiness is Harder p.34
• A Scale Weighs The Outer World in Pounds and Ounces p.57
• One Life is Spent, The Other Spends Us p.65
• Balance p.67
• Identity p.68
• For Horses, Horseflies p.69
~~~
A Cedary Fragrance
Even now,
decades after,
I wash my face with cold water—
Not for discipline,
nor memory,
nor the icy, awakening slap,
but to practice
choosing
to make the unwanted wanted.
~~~
p. 32
Highlights for me included;
• Red Onion, Cherries, Boiling Potatoes, Milk— p.24
• In Praise of Coldness p.31
• Happiness is Harder p.34
• A Scale Weighs The Outer World in Pounds and Ounces p.57
• One Life is Spent, The Other Spends Us p.65
• Balance p.67
• Identity p.68
• For Horses, Horseflies p.69
~~~
A Cedary Fragrance
Even now,
decades after,
I wash my face with cold water—
Not for discipline,
nor memory,
nor the icy, awakening slap,
but to practice
choosing
to make the unwanted wanted.
~~~
p. 32
July 31, 2020
Boy, when she hits, and she does often, it's like sparks off an anvil. Try "Ink," or "Clock:"
"All clocks in themselves are serene.
It is their task to run down."
"All clocks in themselves are serene.
It is their task to run down."
February 7, 2017
Poetry, I love you! Hirshfield is a hidden gem of a glorious poet. I love her collections. Touching, thoughtful, moving, whimsical, she takes me on a journey with every poem, every line. Brilliant!
June 19, 2007
I'm not sure what I think of these poems yet. I like difficult, lyric poetry, but these are sometimes so detached--the images don't have any emotional resonance for me. Perhaps I'm just being lazy about making the connections. I'm perhaps also not crazy about the meta-poem references, or the allusions to a muse.
November 3, 2019
There are some wonderful poems in this collection. Poems that illuminate life and language.
I heard Jane Hirshfield read in 2017, all short poems, and found her amazing. This collection, written 16 years prior is more uneven, but I still found her use of everyday language to have to ability to astonish.
I heard Jane Hirshfield read in 2017, all short poems, and found her amazing. This collection, written 16 years prior is more uneven, but I still found her use of everyday language to have to ability to astonish.
July 27, 2013
I think this is one of my favorite collections of poetry. Jane Hirshfield's poems are raw and honest, but she paints her emotions with such beauty. I envy her ability to convey one simple feeling with such clarity.
December 12, 2014
Some of these poems are a little too focused on the poet, or on themselves, but some of them open up new avenues of thought and reflection, which is the whole reason I read poetry in the first place. A very mixed bag, but overall a worthwhile read.
August 12, 2008
This is the first poetry book I've read in a long time cover to cover. I read it like I read novels. I couldn't wait to get back to it. I loved every poem.
October 17, 2012
These poems reveal a simple and profound depth of attention to the many unfolding dimensions of each moment.
February 13, 2014
Some really great poems in here, both perfectly structured and very moving. I was surprised by how much I related to these, perhaps more than any other collection I've read.
March 31, 2020
These are incredible poems! THis woman is a genius!
April 3, 2024
so much wisdom in these poems
November 7, 2024
I owe my introduction to Jane Hirschfield to Roberta Hatcher, who tells a charming story of how she was introduced to her by Lawrence Wray.
I had read a couple of her poems in an Autumn House anthology, but hadn’t been hooked. Reading this volume has put her in the top section of my A-list.
Many of these poems turn on a surprising simile, or surprising metaphor, and the following of the simile/metaphor away from the poem’s main line. Many of the poems are aimed at little turns in the human thought process which other writers tend to ignore. The result, in reading this collection, is many surprises, many touching moments, and that feeling of seeing the world anew.
The six poems that particularly struck me were:
“This Was Once a Love Poem”
“After Attending Neither the Lecture on How Plants and Animals Self-Orient in Space nor the One on the Abrupt Decline of Frogs”
“Commentary Inflection: Inverted Form”
“All Evening, Each Time I Started to Say It”
“The Gallop”
“Minotaur”
And from “Like an Ant Carrying Her Bits of Leaf or Sand” (which compares the ant’s instinctive behavior to the poet’s) this was a favorite stanza:
The work of existence devours its own unfolding.
What dissolves will dissolve --
you, reader, and I, and all our quick angers and longings,
The potato's sugary hunger for growing larger,
The unblinking heat of the tiger.
This one is going in the reread pile, and I have The Lives of the Heart already on my to-read shelf.
Recommended, with extreme prejudice.
I had read a couple of her poems in an Autumn House anthology, but hadn’t been hooked. Reading this volume has put her in the top section of my A-list.
Many of these poems turn on a surprising simile, or surprising metaphor, and the following of the simile/metaphor away from the poem’s main line. Many of the poems are aimed at little turns in the human thought process which other writers tend to ignore. The result, in reading this collection, is many surprises, many touching moments, and that feeling of seeing the world anew.
The six poems that particularly struck me were:
“This Was Once a Love Poem”
“After Attending Neither the Lecture on How Plants and Animals Self-Orient in Space nor the One on the Abrupt Decline of Frogs”
“Commentary Inflection: Inverted Form”
“All Evening, Each Time I Started to Say It”
“The Gallop”
“Minotaur”
And from “Like an Ant Carrying Her Bits of Leaf or Sand” (which compares the ant’s instinctive behavior to the poet’s) this was a favorite stanza:
The work of existence devours its own unfolding.
What dissolves will dissolve --
you, reader, and I, and all our quick angers and longings,
The potato's sugary hunger for growing larger,
The unblinking heat of the tiger.
This one is going in the reread pile, and I have The Lives of the Heart already on my to-read shelf.
Recommended, with extreme prejudice.
July 6, 2021
I enjoyed Hirshfield's poetry very much, she examines the world in a way that includes and captures the senses overwhelming the reader with the feeling that the poet has veered into manipulation.
I appreciated the simplicity of the themes: time passing, the value of being able to create, domesticity (by which I do not mean marriage, but rather the rituals surrounding the home and care for the home), death, love. The themes themselves were very simple, but Hirshfield was able to explore them in ways that show the depth of simplicity, as well as the value of it. Some of the poetry veered away from showing the reader simple realities and offering a shaped perspective of them, and instead created an almost religious take on the rituals we build our lives on. While I'm more inclined to prefer the first type of poem, the second style gave me a lot to think about.
I'm not quite grasping all of the nuance the author incorporated into this collection, I certainly think it's going to be one I read again.
TREE
it is foolish
to let a young redwood
grow next to a house.
Even in this
one lifetime,
you will have to choose.
That great calm being,
this clutter of soup pots and books-
Already the first branch-tips brush at the window.
Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.
I appreciated the simplicity of the themes: time passing, the value of being able to create, domesticity (by which I do not mean marriage, but rather the rituals surrounding the home and care for the home), death, love. The themes themselves were very simple, but Hirshfield was able to explore them in ways that show the depth of simplicity, as well as the value of it. Some of the poetry veered away from showing the reader simple realities and offering a shaped perspective of them, and instead created an almost religious take on the rituals we build our lives on. While I'm more inclined to prefer the first type of poem, the second style gave me a lot to think about.
I'm not quite grasping all of the nuance the author incorporated into this collection, I certainly think it's going to be one I read again.
TREE
it is foolish
to let a young redwood
grow next to a house.
Even in this
one lifetime,
you will have to choose.
That great calm being,
this clutter of soup pots and books-
Already the first branch-tips brush at the window.
Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.
February 1, 2024
Five Star fabulous! This collection is a treasure trove of metaphors and similes that transform the poet’s daily life into a world of wonder. Almost every poem is a marvel of wordcraft and imaginative ingenuity.
Favorite Poems:
“Apple”
“A Hand”
“Habit”
“Rebus”
“Waking This Morning Dreamless after Long Sleep”
“This Was Once a Love Poem”
“Dream Notebook”
“Button”
“Always She Reads the Same Translation”
“Red Onion, Cherries, Boiling Potatoes, Milk—“
“Inflection Finally Graspable by Grammar”
“Each Day I Choose from Among the Steepening Reminders”
“Patched Carpet”
“The Gallop”
“Pillow”
“Great Powers Once Raged through Your Body”
“Minotaur”
“Muslin”
“Like an Ant Carrying Her Bits of Leaf and Sand”
“Moment”
“The Poet Looks at Her Poems”
“August Day”
“Balance”
“Identity”
“Optimism”
“Silk Cord”
“The Silence”
“Sleep”
“Ink”
“Metempsychosis”
Favorite Poems:
“Apple”
“A Hand”
“Habit”
“Rebus”
“Waking This Morning Dreamless after Long Sleep”
“This Was Once a Love Poem”
“Dream Notebook”
“Button”
“Always She Reads the Same Translation”
“Red Onion, Cherries, Boiling Potatoes, Milk—“
“Inflection Finally Graspable by Grammar”
“Each Day I Choose from Among the Steepening Reminders”
“Patched Carpet”
“The Gallop”
“Pillow”
“Great Powers Once Raged through Your Body”
“Minotaur”
“Muslin”
“Like an Ant Carrying Her Bits of Leaf and Sand”
“Moment”
“The Poet Looks at Her Poems”
“August Day”
“Balance”
“Identity”
“Optimism”
“Silk Cord”
“The Silence”
“Sleep”
“Ink”
“Metempsychosis”
September 22, 2024
This is a difficult book to rate. Many of the poems in this book are poems about poems, poems about poetry, poems describing their own writing process, all of which I found to be a bit too meta and a lot of them didn't work for me. I found a lot of them a little too simplistic, too. But Jane Hirschfield does have a strong voice and can economically create lovely images in few words. There are some absolute gems in here, some poems that I now consider to be favourites of mine.
The poems here that I really loved were 'Apple', 'Button', 'August Day', 'Tree'
And especially 'Red Onions, Cherries Boiling Potatoes, Milk', and 'In Praise of Coldness'. I mean:
"In sorrow pretend to be fearless. In happiness, tremble."
What an absolutely raw line.
The poems here that I really loved were 'Apple', 'Button', 'August Day', 'Tree'
And especially 'Red Onions, Cherries Boiling Potatoes, Milk', and 'In Praise of Coldness'. I mean:
"In sorrow pretend to be fearless. In happiness, tremble."
What an absolutely raw line.
January 31, 2021
Jane Hirshfield is a fine poet, I took my time reading this book and enjoyed its content. Some poems are elaborate thus I had no hurry to taste them slowly.
Now, about Perennial/Harper Collins editor, why such a scarcity of pages? Why only 88 pages? I am not complaining about the selection of poems but about the fact that this book ends with a poem and On THE BACK OF IT is the About the Author half page, then the cover! It looks cheap, one or two extra pages, white, to write on notes or to meditate, with the About the Author in a page on itself to give the page and the author they own importance would have made such a difference for a tiny book that costs $14.99.
Now, about Perennial/Harper Collins editor, why such a scarcity of pages? Why only 88 pages? I am not complaining about the selection of poems but about the fact that this book ends with a poem and On THE BACK OF IT is the About the Author half page, then the cover! It looks cheap, one or two extra pages, white, to write on notes or to meditate, with the About the Author in a page on itself to give the page and the author they own importance would have made such a difference for a tiny book that costs $14.99.
December 11, 2018
Small things were inspiration for most of the poems in this book - a button, leather, a typhoid vaccine. I liked the depth she brought to those items, but I much preferred the poems that delved deeper into the author's psychological attachments to everyday things. 'Silk Cord' is probably my favorite of the entire book, but 'Pilllow' and 'Habit' are also memorable. Knowing Hirshfield's other works, though, some of the included works in this book are lack-luster.
March 8, 2020
Found a good number of poems that hit the mark -- that intake of breath, the recognition. Liked this book of poems more than Come Thief. Poems like "A Hand", "Habit" and "Poem Holding it's Heart in One Hand." Beautiful. Highly Recommended.
December 23, 2022
It's hard to say which poem in this book might be my favorite. So many of them moved me! I loved "Habit," and "Rebus," and "Patched Carpet." "Pillow," and "Rock." "Balance." I will definitely be seeking out more of Jane Hirshfield's books.
June 30, 2025
Šis bija tāds 50/50 krājums. Lai gan dzejoļos paustās idejas un domas ir uzrunājošas un trāpīgas, dzejniece tās gandrīz vienmēr ir apkrāmējusi ar tādiem vārdu salātiem, aiz kuriem ieraudzīt būtisko kļūst pagrūti.
March 3, 2018
Beautiful poems that build on themselves to deliver deep and emotional messages.
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