Human Wishes

by Robert Hass

Poems deal with language, desire, suffering, art, human relationships, and mortality.

Genres: Poetry, The United States Of America, American, College

96 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Robert Hass was born in San Francisco and lives in Berkeley, California, where he teaches at the University of California. He served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1995 to 1997. A MacArthur Fellow and a two-time winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, he has published poems, literary essays, and translations. He is married to the poet Brenda Hillman.

Reviews

[Helena · Rating 5 out of 5]

my boyfriend studied with robert haas in grad school. my dad lives in the same neighborhood as robert haas and keeps meeting him at uc berkeley lectures where they end up seated together. when my dad and my boyfriend met, they bonded by unceasingly talking about robert haas as "bob." this sounds slightly obnxious, but this book really, really, really makes you want to call robert haas "bob." It makes you want to sit on a porch in northern california with him and eat mangoes with your hands. It makes you want to tell him all your love life/family troubles and wait for him to nod and say "hmmm" raspy in his throat and then say something wryly humorous that would suddenly make it all right and then explain clear all your stated confusion.

in a recent new yorker article, the author said that haas' seemingly nonsexual poetry is in fact exactly the perfect poetry for one to use to get the kind of women who wouldn't want to be seduced by poetry to go to bed with you. try it. I bet it works.

anyway, this is without question the most important book of poetry published in the last 30 years.

[Francisca · Rating 5 out of 5]

*4.5*

according to stanley kunitz (who i have just read on hass' wikipedia page), "reading a poem by Robert Hass is like stepping into the ocean when the temperature of the water is not much different from that of the air. You scarcely know, until you feel the undertow tug at you, that you have entered into another element"

couldn't have said it better myself even if i had tried (and i didn´t)

i became, unbeknownst to me, enamoured with this poetry collection. like slowly stepping into the sea.

i usually keep a notebook beside me while reading poetry because, most of the times, the book is not actually mine to anote on, and yet i have the impending need to write the quotes that strike me the most. once i had finished this book, i realised i only have one quotation scribbled down and it's not even that fantastic

each poet
had to agree to be responsible for the innocence of all the suffering of the earth,
because they learned in arithmetic, during long school days, that if there was anything left over,
you had to carry it

i read this quote and it makes me smile. yet, it cannot really do justice to hass' work mostly due to hass' own work. there aren't really pieces here for you to pick, no lines to save up for the future detached from their context. you either take each poem as a whole or you let it go away. i would say, rounding up roughly speaking, i took 75% of these poems with me. the other 25% was rather a miss for me and i have no quarrel with the notion of leaving them behind. i suppose this must be an inevitable response from someone who works with mixed styles--prose-like blocks and free verse--that one has a favourite form over the other. and, considering this is my very first incursion into any form of poetry not written within nice little columns, i would say this was quite the successful read for me and, so far, my favourite poetry collection of this year (sorry, seamus heaney)

[Brooke Shaffner · Rating 3 out of 5]

The shorter poems ended too abruptly and the longer poems, with their stream of consciousness drift between the meta and concrete, felt klunky and not particularly revelatory, the digression evasive and unsatisfying. Maybe I don't share Hass' preoccupations (they often felt dated), but he didn't make much new for me. There were some pleasurable turns of thought, like in Berkeley Eclogue.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Human Wishes by Robert Haas

This book of thirty-one poems won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1989.

Here are favorites from this collection and some notable lines. Most of the poems are rooted to a place - which is a kind of poetry that I tend to appreciate more than others.


1. Spring Rain - my favorite poem - no surprise it is a nature poem.

2. Rusia en 1931 - historical poem

3. Novella - a poem of a girl's remembrance

4. Tall Windows - orderliness and bravery in the face of the holocaust.

5. Paschal Lamb - a poem on how to end the war in Vietnam. Loved it.

6. In the Bahamas - an observational poem about the Caribbean


A Pacific squall started no one knows where ...

Poetry proposes no solutions: it says justice is the well water of the city of Novgorod, black and sweet ...

Cesar Vallejo died on a Thursday. It might have been malaria no one is sure ...

The gazelle's head turned; three jackals are eating his entrails and he is watching ...

It lay in her memory like one piece of broken tile ...

I longed for California and thought I smelled laurel leaves: riding an acacia limb in the spring ...

Riding through the Netherlands on a train, you notice that even the junk was neatly stacked in the junkyards ...

The helicopters at Bienhoa would sit on the airfields in silence like squads of disciplined mosquitoes ...

Have you ever been to Haiti? Now there is a truly appalling place ...

Near Big Sur Lighthouse, morning, dunes of white sand the eelgrass holds in place ...

They walked Long the dry gully. Cottonwoods, so the river must be underground ...

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lot of people will be immediately turned off by the general context of these poems. They are, after all, the result of a middle-aged white dude reflecting on his middle-aged white dudeness and are thus populated by flowers and mountains and suburban abortions, banalities refracted through the prism of stereotypical and stereotypically stirring meditations on birds and angels and Memories Of What It Was Like To Be Young.

Even so, this fucker can write . You won’t find yourself reciting incisive lines to your significant other on a Tuesday after dinner but these poems – their ideas, thoughts, maneuverings and wanderings – nevertheless vibrate the Aeolian harp that’s surely in all of us, smooth through the creases of our aches and wrinkles and pains, rub the sleep from our eyes so we don’t have to.

In short, they make us human all over again, renew that which but for art we might have lost. And if you want more than that from poetry (or life!) you’re just being greedy.

[Noga A · Rating 5 out of 5]

Assume the children are alright. They’re singing at the kibbutzim. The sun is rising.lets get past this part.the kindergarten is a garden and they face their fears in stories your face makes musical and they they sleep.they hear the sirens?yes, they hear the sirens.That part can’t be helped.no one beats them,though.And there are no lies they recognize.

[Kyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovely summer reading. I've never been to the coast of California but I like to believe that it is bathed in the kind of light and warmth and suburban tranquility that is Robert Hass's nostalgia.

[Christopher McCaffery · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful.

[Alexandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's hard to express my feelings for this book without seeming cliche. I want to talk about the depth that Hass is able to express in such simple images, how he can elevate people watching to a work of art in Museum. He elevates the everyday work of cooking and gardening beyond the need of the essential while still keeping it grounded in a sense of humbleness. For me, he really answers the question of what makes a prose poem a poem instead of short fiction. For his prose poems do tell a story, but they do so with lyrical beauty. There is harshness in those poems, more so than the others, but the calming language prevails within them and shows how muddled the ugliness of the world can be. His series of Spring Drawing poems address the difficulties of writing so subtly in places that sometimes it is easy to forget that I am the reader on the outside of the poem and not within it.

[H]

It killed something in me, I thought, or froze it,
to have to see where beauty comes from.

makes holy the mundane. at first i was reading it just to read it—but “the apple trees at olema” made me laugh in delight and i read all of “santa lucia ii” out loud to a friend and somehow he makes the world and a single life in it feel large and full and lovely. the content isn’t earth-shattering but the care and attention he brings to it is nonetheless notable, deft

[Ronald Wise · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting collection of poetry, often touching on the dynamics of family life. I found the most interesting the ones where Hass seems eager to wax poetic, and his thoughts are interrupted with troubling observations of his own children. I learned of this poetry collection from a tribute to Hass's birthday (02/28/1941) on Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac.

[Kevin Fitzpatrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having read Mr. Hass's non-fiction book concerning poetic form, I knew that he was an informed, sensitive commentator/instructor in matters dealing with all things poetic. In fact, that previous book was instrumental in growing me into larger contact with the world of poetry, which led, in turn, to my purchasing this small tome in a small bookstore in Montana. Boy, was I pleasantly surprised to discover that Mr. Hass is as sensitive and talented a poet as he is a commentator on poetic form. Consisting of four discrete segments, "Human Wishes" is as fine a collection of poetry as I have perused in an extremely long time. For the works here, both the prose poem pieces and the more traditional forms, are lucid, sensitive, and really lovingly constructed. Through these works we discover, through the author's mastery of language and meter, the wit and wisdom of Mr. Hass as he makes his way through the world. Along the way we meet his son Luke, spitting for a fight with his passive father; a daughter, hung-over, who miscommunicates with her mother; lovers who, though close and intimate, still acknowledge the loneliness that remains at the center of their being. Mr. Hass thus communicates a level of wisdom that enlightens and, because its is couched in such wonderful fluent phrases, entertains. Personally I preferred the more traditional forms over the prose pieces (they seemed less 'true' as poetry), but all the pieces have something salient to offer a perceptive reader. And this is because Mr. Hass is a master at what he does! Read this slim volume if you wish to become enlightened; read it again to experience the music of a master! This is a great book!

[Daniel Klawitter · Rating 4 out of 5]

What moves this book from 3 to 4 stars for me is that it contains one of Hass' best poems: "Misery and Splendor," a meditation on two lovers embracing:

"They are trying to become one creature,
and something will not have it. They are tender
with each other, afraid,
their brief, sharp cries will reconcile them to the moment
when they fall away again. So they rub against each other,
their mouths dry, then wet, then dry.
They feel themselves at the center of a powerful
and baffled will. They feel
they are an almost animal,
washed up on the shore of a world-
or huddled against the gate of a garden-
to which they can't admit they can never be admitted."

Good stuff.

There's also a few moments of levity to be found in this collection, as in the poem "Berkeley Eclogue":

"She slammed the door.
He was, of course, forlorn. And lorn and afterlorn."

And then there are the "prose poems" that make up quite a bit of the book. A "prose poem" is something of an oxymoron, since technically, the only thing you can do in poetry that you cannot do in prose is write VERSE...i.e., metrical writing...or at the very least, the artful line breaks that distinguish poetry rhythmically from the standard prose sentence and paragraph structure. All that being said though, there IS certainly such a thing as "poetic prose", and Hass accomplishes that particularly in the piece entitled "A Story About the Body" by using understated but skillful imagery and language. For example: "The radiance that he had carried around in his belly and chest cavity--like music--withered very quickly." Still, the piece is poetic prose and not strictly a narrative poem (even though the narrative is well done). But this is exactly what Hass was playing with in this book...the boundaries between poetry and prose and trying to blur them. He doesn't always succeed, but he is almost always worth re-reading.

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

When current events are just way too much for me I tune out. I read poetry, typically poetry with a nature theme. I lived in the North Berkeley Hills for some time in the same neighborhood as the author. He also spends a good amount of time in west Marin County near Olema and Point Reyes National Seashore. This area can’t be developed. It’s protected land. It’s also one of my most favorite places. The poems about these areas were particularly meaningful for me.

[Dillon Allen-Perez · Rating 4 out of 5]

7/10

This is the third collection of poetry from U.S. Poet Laureate (1995 - 1997) and UC Berkeley professor Robert Hass. My first time reading his poetry in book form was the 2010 collection The Apple Trees at Olema, which contained some new poems as well as selections from his five previously published collections, including 1989’s Human Wishes. I read his newest collection, Summer Snow, when it was published in 2020 and have since gone back to the beginning of his career to read each collection in full, from his debut forward. I’ve become a big fan but won’t feel fully satisfied calling myself a big fan until I fill in all the blanks in my experience of reading his work.

So far, Human Wishes is the collection I enjoyed the least. That is not to say that it is bad, though. Hass is still good on a bad day. Even if every poem didn’t manage to pull me in and carry me away in the current, many managed to do so, or at least had some wonderful lines.

One poem in this collection, “Natural Theology”, demonstrates Hass’ heavy power as a poet, from visible descriptions of nature placing us in the setting of the words to the final lines blowing our minds.

White daisies against the burnt orange of the windowframe,
lusterless redwood in the nickel gray of winter . . .

. . . and the city twinkles in particular windows, throbs
in its accumulated glow which is also and more blindingly
the imagination of need from which the sun keeps rising into morning light,
because desires do not split themselves up, there is one desire
touching the many things, and it is continuous.

I’ve given you the beginning imagery and the ending here, but I encourage you to go find the entire poem to read. I encourage you to pick up the book even. Although my least favorite so far, it is still worth your time if you’re interested in Hass. Human Wishes gives us “Santa Lucia II”, the sequel to Hass’ poem “Santa Lucia” from his fantastic 1979 collection Praise. In a note in the back of Human Wishes we learn that

Santa Lucia is the name of the virgin saint to whom several early Christian legends are attached, and also of a mountain range on the central California coast. The speaker of this poem is a woman who, apparently, writes about art professionally.

Also, the title The Apple Trees at Olema comes from a poem of the same title within the pages of Human Wishes, so the poet himself must consider this collection of some ongoing importance (unless, of course, that was some publisher’s idea, in which case someone still considered it, as of 2010).

[J B · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's genius. I have to read it again.

[Meg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well I guess now I've got to go find all the other things Robert Hass has ever written and read those too.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

31 years ago this was published. And it is still beautiful.

[Joe Imwalle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked the section of prose poems best. I felt like I really understood it’s value as a form here. These are also great models for poems that combine family life and lyric.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Now that’s what I call poetry 10/10

[Reid · Rating 5 out of 5]

i never leave reviews but it’s been months since i first picked up this book and currently it is the depths of the night and i am thinking about the book so much so i want to get out my nightlight and reread it. i truly don’t know why this book isn’t talked about much but the way it made me feel page after page, it was so beautiful. and to me, that is the highest regard i can say for a book, truly, it makes me emotional

[Tyler Pike · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book I keep in the middle of the most easily accessible bookshelf in my house. I just had a thought that maybe I need ten copies so that I won't have to decide which shelf is best and could just have it on all of them. Because I love it and read delicious lines from it all the time and anytime. I used to sit in on Robert Hass' poetry classes at Berkeley even though I was studying physics and Chinese and had no time for anything. That was before Hass had won so many awards and accolades that made him a more "famous" poet than even Ginsberg, who haunts the halls of Berkeley too. I never sat down to chat with Hass and thank him for his words and sentences , like I did with Allen Ginsberg before he died. I guess there's still time because Robert Hass is very much alive still, but let this review serve as a giant resounding THANK YOU to Hass and even a BLESS YOU!!! The last word is always his:

There were orange poppies on the table in a clear glass vase, stained near the bottom to the colour of sunrise;

The unstated theme was the blessedness of gathering and the blessing of dispersal --

It made you glad for beauty like that, casual and intense, lasting as long as the poppies last.

[Laura Sackton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading poetry feels like an almost impossibly intimate exchange between the poet and me. There is something absolutely vital the poet is trying to tell me, specifically. There is something about the immediacy and the vulnerability of poetry that gives me this feeling.

Robert Hass, in this book, is talking to me about balance. He's talking about the unbelievably painful balance between beauty and terror, about the balance between loving and being afraid, between the seasons, between home and away. His poetry is lyrical and sparse at the same time. He has this way of taking you on a journey through minute detail after minute detail, often unrelated, and then sweeping outward to make some statement of abstract truth that leave you breathless. Each of his poems is precarious, in a way, full of love for the ordinary and a need to express that, but also a need to express something that comes from outside the realm of the ordinary. In each poem, he presents something – a person, a place, an idea – says, LOOK AT THIS, and then says, IT WON’T LAST. The truly extraordinary moments in his poetry are the places where he explores the space and the distance and the balance between those two truths.

[Helen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Robert Hass's poems are soft and emotional. A gorgeous weaving of life, tiny snapshots of landscapes described in such detail to make every day domestic scenes seem wondrous.

Some of hte poems in this collection follow a traditional, blank verse form, but my favorites are the prose poems, brushing ever so lightly the line between the poetic and flash fiction. In one of my favorites, Quartet, a dinner party of four is described in such a way:

... The main course is
French, loin of pork probably, with a North African accent, and very
good. The dessert will be sweet and fresh, having to do with cream and
berries (it is early fall), and it feels like a course, it is that substantial

It makes your mouth water, want to pull up a chair and join in the conversation. Every poem invites you in in similar ways, whether it's a duck hunt, a walk to comfort a friend after an abortion, or a summer vacation with a surly teenager. Good stuff.

[Shannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mesmerizing.

At first, I wasn't sure what to make of Hass' poetry. The poems were long--some of them pages--composed of statements. "She had bobbed hair ..." "He must have received a disability check. ..." "The main course is French, loin of pork probably, with a North African accent, and very good." Knowing that good writers show, not tell, and avoid statements, I began to to wonder if Robert Hass was overrated and almost did not finish the book of poems.

On second re-reading, I fell in love with his words. Accepting his blunt statements as invitations into the everyday world, I could sift into his deeper thoughts of life, love, death, winter skies, a small family in a museum cafe, a widow in the Holocaust. My heart was full after reading the beautiful language in his works. I would recommend Hass to the poetry lover.

[Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

In these lush and intelligent poems, Robert Hass explores several human dichotomies, being most concerned with the chasm between what humans desire and what the reality of those realized desires is comparatively. He also investigates aging (“January,” 34-36), the contrast between suffering in the United States and the global view of suffering (“Museum,” 18), and the connectedness of the natural world and human actions (“Spring Rain,” 7-8, “Human Wishes,” 23). Hass is a technical virtuoso, moving easily between free verse and prose poetry, while keeping his tone and voice consistent. I return often to "A Story About the Body" (32), a complex meditation on how we objectify the body and the implications of that on human emotion.

[Bradley Harrison · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The archbishop of San Salvador is dead, murdered by no one knows / who. The left says the right, the right says provocateurs. // But the families in the barrios sleep with their children beside them and / a pitchfork, or a rifle if they have one. // And posterity is grubbing in the footnotes to find out who the bishops is, // or waiting for the poet to get back to his business. Well, there's this: // her breasts are the color of brown stones in moonlight, and paler in / moonlight. // And that should hold them for a while. The bishop is dead. Poetry / proposes no solutions: it says justice is the well water of the city of / Novgorod, black and sweet."




an excerpt from, "Rusia en 1931"






Who doesn't love a reference to Romero?

[Jay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well I hacen't read a Robert Hass book I think is perfect.

This one doesn't have the stretched-out, conversational, biographical poems of Sun Under Wood -- nothing like "Regalia For a Black Hat Dancer" or "English: an Ode" -- but it does have some buzzy, mysterious, beautiful, liquid-seeming poems; the whole last section of the book is incredible. Of the prose poems, "A Story About the Body" is unfortunately way far the best, although I still love "Duck Blind" too.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Woah. Really dense, pretty amazing, and kind of over my head. So many beautiful lines. "Her breasts are the color of brown stones in moonlight and paler in moonlight." Amazing. Mostly poetry, but also an absolute balance of poetry and prose. But mostly poetry. Kind of don't even know what to make of it. Just woke up from a nap, for one thing.

[Edward Nudelman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great poet, but sometimes I find his poems a bit thick, a bit arduous to wade through. But I've learned a lot through reading Hass. He's been criticized for not being broad enough, and I think that's somewhat founded. But what he does, he does well. This is one of my favorite Hass compilations.