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Wild Gratitude
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry, 1986
“This is a lovely and moving collection, and it has not only the courage of its strong emotions, but the language and form that makes and keeps them clear and true.”
—Anthony Hecht
“Hirsch remains a poet of celebration, but the sorrows of the world are here too, in equal measure. The language is, throughout, simple, sensuous, and direct. We can be grateful for this book and this poet.”
—Jay Parini
“I have known the poetry of Edward Hirsch for some time, and have greatly admired it. But I even more greatly admire his Wild Gratitude as a general collection, and I am convinced that the best poems here are unsurpassed in our time.”
—Robert Penn Warren
“This is a lovely and moving collection, and it has not only the courage of its strong emotions, but the language and form that makes and keeps them clear and true.”
—Anthony Hecht
“Hirsch remains a poet of celebration, but the sorrows of the world are here too, in equal measure. The language is, throughout, simple, sensuous, and direct. We can be grateful for this book and this poet.”
—Jay Parini
“I have known the poetry of Edward Hirsch for some time, and have greatly admired it. But I even more greatly admire his Wild Gratitude as a general collection, and I am convinced that the best poems here are unsurpassed in our time.”
—Robert Penn Warren
96 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1986
14 people are currently reading
176 people want to read
About the author
Edward Hirsch
77 books177 followersEdward Hirsch is a celebrated poet and peerless advocate for poetry. He was born in Chicago in 1950—his accent makes it impossible for him to hide his origins—and educated at Grinnell College and the University of Pennsylvania, where he received a Ph.D. in Folklore. His devotion to poetry is lifelong.He has received numerous awards and fellowships, including a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Ingram Merrill Foundation Award, a Pablo Neruda Presidential Medal of Honor, the Prix de Rome, and an Academy of Arts and Letters Award. In 2008, he was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.
bio-img
Edward Hirsch’s first collection of poems, For the Sleepwalkers (1981), received the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award from New York University and the Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets. His second collection, Wild Gratitude (1986), won the National Book Critics Award.
Since then, he has published six additional books of poems: The Night Parade (1989), Earthly Measures (1994),On Love (1998), Lay Back the Darkness (2003), Special Orders (2008), and The Living Fire: New and Selected Poems (2010), which brings together thirty-five years of poems.Hirsch is also the author of five prose books, including A Poet’s Glossary (2014), the result of decades of passionate study, Poet’s Choice (2006), which consists of his popular columns from the Washington Post Book World, and How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry (1999), a national bestseller. He is the editor of Theodore Roethke’s Selected Poems (2005) and co-editor of The Making of a Sonnet: A Norton Anthology (2008). He also edits the series “The Writer’s World” (Trinity University Press).Edward Hirsch taught for six years in the English Department at Wayne State University and seventeen years in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston. He is now president of the
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
bio-img
Edward Hirsch’s first collection of poems, For the Sleepwalkers (1981), received the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award from New York University and the Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets. His second collection, Wild Gratitude (1986), won the National Book Critics Award.
Since then, he has published six additional books of poems: The Night Parade (1989), Earthly Measures (1994),On Love (1998), Lay Back the Darkness (2003), Special Orders (2008), and The Living Fire: New and Selected Poems (2010), which brings together thirty-five years of poems.Hirsch is also the author of five prose books, including A Poet’s Glossary (2014), the result of decades of passionate study, Poet’s Choice (2006), which consists of his popular columns from the Washington Post Book World, and How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry (1999), a national bestseller. He is the editor of Theodore Roethke’s Selected Poems (2005) and co-editor of The Making of a Sonnet: A Norton Anthology (2008). He also edits the series “The Writer’s World” (Trinity University Press).Edward Hirsch taught for six years in the English Department at Wayne State University and seventeen years in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston. He is now president of the
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
January 12, 2020
What an amazing collection of poems--all very fine, great poems. You have to take your time with these. Hirsch makes you read slowly--very, very slowly--to take it in, to just be in the present moment of Reading This Poem Right Now. Each poem here strives for the eternal--that grasping, yearning towards something in your soul. Each poem here does this for me but my personal favorite is "Poor Angels. "
December 26, 2016
SIX WORD REVIEW: A poet makes the mundane beautiful.
March 7, 2017
I’m almost a hunchback from trying to hold up
The sky by myself. The clouds are enormous
And I need strength from the weight lifters.
How many nights can I go on like this
Without a single light from the sky: no moon,
No stars, not even one dingy street lamp?
*
[…] the summer nights were immense—
Clear as a country lake, pure, bottomless.
The stars were like giant kites, casting loose.…
*
Tonight the past seems as sharp and inevitable
As the moment in Indian Summer when you glance up
From a photograph album and discover the fireflies
Pulsing in the woods in front of the house
And the stars blackening in a thicket of clouds.…
The sky by myself. The clouds are enormous
And I need strength from the weight lifters.
How many nights can I go on like this
Without a single light from the sky: no moon,
No stars, not even one dingy street lamp?
*
[…] the summer nights were immense—
Clear as a country lake, pure, bottomless.
The stars were like giant kites, casting loose.…
*
Tonight the past seems as sharp and inevitable
As the moment in Indian Summer when you glance up
From a photograph album and discover the fireflies
Pulsing in the woods in front of the house
And the stars blackening in a thicket of clouds.…
July 28, 2021
Edward Hirsch, the poet, is like a man who has flown out of himself. He has lost his heavy human body and it is his voice that I hear when I read these poems.
Hirsch grows less like a man poem by poem. He is the voice of reason at the bewitching hour, the hour when we who have not slept, who grow muddy of mind, but not of desire, begin to hear the sirens sing. Whether the voice is that of a poet or a ghost, these poems merge with pure emotion. Like listening to Beethoven with the volume turned up and one's ear to the floorboards, one wonders how did he manage this "Wild Gratitude."
So many of these poems help me to leave the ordinary behind, to see the soft splendor of my infant world in sharp focus again, to see the goodness of shadows. Each poem is like a transfusion of courage. How I wish I could write like this!
Hirsch grows less like a man poem by poem. He is the voice of reason at the bewitching hour, the hour when we who have not slept, who grow muddy of mind, but not of desire, begin to hear the sirens sing. Whether the voice is that of a poet or a ghost, these poems merge with pure emotion. Like listening to Beethoven with the volume turned up and one's ear to the floorboards, one wonders how did he manage this "Wild Gratitude."
So many of these poems help me to leave the ordinary behind, to see the soft splendor of my infant world in sharp focus again, to see the goodness of shadows. Each poem is like a transfusion of courage. How I wish I could write like this!
August 14, 2011
HIrsch is such a down to earth poet, it´s hard to believe he´s not your personal aquaintance, just telling you something beautiful or terrifying. Also, try to check out his reading of Wild Gratitude, he has such a cute upstate accent.
December 30, 2007
dense, dark, concentrated, a bit academic, but worth the effort
December 13, 2017
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It inspired me to write. Down to earth and relatable...I have a new favorite poet.
August 18, 2017
It's always hard for me to rate books of poems. I like poems one or two at a time, but a whole book of them read quickly tends to make them meaningless. What? Read the book slower? Um...yeah, I suppose, but then I have this unfinished book sitting around forever, and I know me well enough to know that if I don't feel I'm making steady progress on something, it gets abandoned.
This was my first exposure to Hirsch. I liked some of the poems very much, especially the title piece. Some were nice enough, but felt like they meandered hither and yon, never really getting to a point.
It's a nice collection overall, but I can't say I found it memorable.
This was my first exposure to Hirsch. I liked some of the poems very much, especially the title piece. Some were nice enough, but felt like they meandered hither and yon, never really getting to a point.
It's a nice collection overall, but I can't say I found it memorable.
August 30, 2007
Read In the Middle of August in this book or wherever you can find it...
February 20, 2008
Title poem is probably the best in the book...
September 27, 2010
Lovely and surprising. Very sweet poems.
July 29, 2024
…But down here all your bones make music.
Down here in the middle
of the middle of the night, you're awake listening to the steady drumroll of a heart
ghostly with losses, your tribal chant. SLEEPWATCH excerpt
I could give 5 stars for the title of the book, and how it felt to prop the book up on my table and look at it many times in a day and think ahh, mmm, yes. The poems themselves didn’t always resonate; the title one has some powerful lines but I cringe with the part about his cat. I guess there is a lesson there, to take the bad with the good, to embrace the discomfort with the joy but... Still cringing, and I edited some of them out. I hope that is not disrespectful, but this is my review of what resonated with me. His tone and voice is clear, subtle and full of nature imagery, my favorite.
Fall, falling, fallen. That's the way the season
Changes its tense in the long-haired maples
That dot the road; the veiny hand-shaped leaves
Redden on their branches (in a fiery competition
With the final remaining cardinals) and then
Begin to sidle and float through the air, at last
Settling into colorful layers carpeting the ground.
At twilight the light, too, is layered in the trees
In a season of odd, dusky congruences- -a scarlet tanager
And the odor of burning leaves, a golden retriever
Loping down the center of a wide street and the sun
Setting behind smoke-filled trees in the distance,
A gap opening up in the treetops and a bruised cloud
Blamelessly filling the space with purples. Everything
Changes and moves in the split second between summer's
Sprawling past and winter's hard revision, one moment
Pulling out of the station according to schedule,
Another moment arriving on the next platform. It
Happens almost like clockwork: the leaves drift away
From their branches and gather slowly at our feet,
Sliding over our ankles, and the season begins moving
Around us even as its colorful weather moves us,
Even as it pulls us into its dusty, twilit pockets.
And every year there is a brief, startling moment
When we pause in the middle of a long walk home and
Suddenly feel something invisible and weightless
Touching our shoulders, sweeping down from the air:
It is the autumn wind pressing against our bodies;
It is the changing light of fall falling on us.
OMEN
I lie down on my side in the moist grass
And drift into a fitful half-sleep, listening
To the hushed sound of wind in the trees.
The moon comes out to stare--glassy, one-eyed-
But then turns away from the ground, smudged.
It's October, and the nights are getting cold:
When I was a boy the summer nights were immense-
Clear as a country lake, pure, bottomless.
The stars were like giant kites, casting loose.
POOR ANGELS
At this hour the soul is like a yellow wing
slipping through the treetops, a little ecstatic
cloud hovering over the sidewalks, calling out
to the approaching night, "Amaze me, amaze me,"
WILD GRATITUDE
Tonight when I knelt down next to our cat, Zooey,
…
And watched her wriggle onto her side, pawing the air,
And listened to her solemn little squeals of delight,
I was thinking about the poet, Christopher Smart,
Who wanted to kneel down and pray without ceasing
In every one of the splintered London streets,
And was locked away in the madhouse at St. Luke's
With his sad religious mania, and his wild gratitude,
And his grave prayers for the other lunatics,
And his great love for his speckled cat, Jeoffry.
All day today--August 13, 1983- I remembered how
Christopher Smart blessed this same day in August, 1759,
For its calm bravery and ordinary good conscience.
This was the day that he blessed the Postmaster General
And all conveyancers of letters" for their warm humanity,
And the gardeners for their private benevolence
And intricate knowledge of the language of flowers,
And the milkmen for their universal human kindness.
This morning I understood that he loved to hear-
As I have heard- the soft clink of milk bottles
On the rickety stairs in the early morning,
And how terrible it must have seemed
When even this small pleasure was denied him.
But it wasn't until tonight when I knelt down
…
But it wasn’t until I saw my own cat
…
Whine and roll over on her fluffy back
And only then did I understand
It is Jeoffry and every creature like him-
Who can teach us how to praise--purring
In their own language,
Wreathing themselves in the living fire.
INDIAN SUMMER
It must have been a night like this one,
Cool and transparent and somehow even-tempered,
Sitting on the friendly wooden porch of someone's
Summer house in mid-October in the country
…
It must have been so soothing to have him back
That no one studied him closely, no one noticed
That there was something askew, something
Dark and puzzling in his eyes, something deeply
Reluctant staring into the narrow, clear-eyed
Lens of the camera. I've imagined it all-
And tonight, so many light years afterwards,
Looking intently at a torn photograph
…
Tonight the past seems as sharp and inevitable
As the moment in Indian Summer when you glance up
From a photograph album and discover the fireflies
Pulsing in the woods in front of the house
RECOVERY
It was as if the rain could feel itself
falling through the air today, as if the air
could actually feel its own dampness, the breeze
could hear a familiar voice explaining the emptiness
to the dark elms that swayed unconsciously along
the wet road, the elms that could still feel
their own branches glistening with rain.
It was as if the sky had imagined a morning
of indigos and pinks, mauves and reddish-browns.
…
The road home was slick with lights
and everything seemed to be crying, just
this, just this, nothing more, nothing else!-
as if the morning were somehow conscious of itself.
When you leaned over and touched me on the arm
it was as if my arm needed to be touched
in that way, at exactly that time.
in Spite of Everything, the Stars
Like a stunned piano, like a bucket
of fresh milk flung into the air
or a dozen fists of confetti
thrown hard at a bride
stepping down from the altar,
the stars surprise the sky.
Think of dazed stones
floating overhead, or an ocean
of starfish hung up to dry. Yes,
like a conductor's expectant arm
about to lift toward the chorus,
or a juggler's plates defying gravity,
or a hundred fastballs fired at once
and freezing in midair, the stars
startle the sky over the city.
…
Because the night is alive with lamps!
That's why in dark houses all over the city
dreams stir in the pillows, a million
Plumes of breath rise into the sky.
Down here in the middle
of the middle of the night, you're awake listening to the steady drumroll of a heart
ghostly with losses, your tribal chant. SLEEPWATCH excerpt
I could give 5 stars for the title of the book, and how it felt to prop the book up on my table and look at it many times in a day and think ahh, mmm, yes. The poems themselves didn’t always resonate; the title one has some powerful lines but I cringe with the part about his cat. I guess there is a lesson there, to take the bad with the good, to embrace the discomfort with the joy but... Still cringing, and I edited some of them out. I hope that is not disrespectful, but this is my review of what resonated with me. His tone and voice is clear, subtle and full of nature imagery, my favorite.
Fall, falling, fallen. That's the way the season
Changes its tense in the long-haired maples
That dot the road; the veiny hand-shaped leaves
Redden on their branches (in a fiery competition
With the final remaining cardinals) and then
Begin to sidle and float through the air, at last
Settling into colorful layers carpeting the ground.
At twilight the light, too, is layered in the trees
In a season of odd, dusky congruences- -a scarlet tanager
And the odor of burning leaves, a golden retriever
Loping down the center of a wide street and the sun
Setting behind smoke-filled trees in the distance,
A gap opening up in the treetops and a bruised cloud
Blamelessly filling the space with purples. Everything
Changes and moves in the split second between summer's
Sprawling past and winter's hard revision, one moment
Pulling out of the station according to schedule,
Another moment arriving on the next platform. It
Happens almost like clockwork: the leaves drift away
From their branches and gather slowly at our feet,
Sliding over our ankles, and the season begins moving
Around us even as its colorful weather moves us,
Even as it pulls us into its dusty, twilit pockets.
And every year there is a brief, startling moment
When we pause in the middle of a long walk home and
Suddenly feel something invisible and weightless
Touching our shoulders, sweeping down from the air:
It is the autumn wind pressing against our bodies;
It is the changing light of fall falling on us.
OMEN
I lie down on my side in the moist grass
And drift into a fitful half-sleep, listening
To the hushed sound of wind in the trees.
The moon comes out to stare--glassy, one-eyed-
But then turns away from the ground, smudged.
It's October, and the nights are getting cold:
When I was a boy the summer nights were immense-
Clear as a country lake, pure, bottomless.
The stars were like giant kites, casting loose.
POOR ANGELS
At this hour the soul is like a yellow wing
slipping through the treetops, a little ecstatic
cloud hovering over the sidewalks, calling out
to the approaching night, "Amaze me, amaze me,"
WILD GRATITUDE
Tonight when I knelt down next to our cat, Zooey,
…
And watched her wriggle onto her side, pawing the air,
And listened to her solemn little squeals of delight,
I was thinking about the poet, Christopher Smart,
Who wanted to kneel down and pray without ceasing
In every one of the splintered London streets,
And was locked away in the madhouse at St. Luke's
With his sad religious mania, and his wild gratitude,
And his grave prayers for the other lunatics,
And his great love for his speckled cat, Jeoffry.
All day today--August 13, 1983- I remembered how
Christopher Smart blessed this same day in August, 1759,
For its calm bravery and ordinary good conscience.
This was the day that he blessed the Postmaster General
And all conveyancers of letters" for their warm humanity,
And the gardeners for their private benevolence
And intricate knowledge of the language of flowers,
And the milkmen for their universal human kindness.
This morning I understood that he loved to hear-
As I have heard- the soft clink of milk bottles
On the rickety stairs in the early morning,
And how terrible it must have seemed
When even this small pleasure was denied him.
But it wasn't until tonight when I knelt down
…
But it wasn’t until I saw my own cat
…
Whine and roll over on her fluffy back
And only then did I understand
It is Jeoffry and every creature like him-
Who can teach us how to praise--purring
In their own language,
Wreathing themselves in the living fire.
INDIAN SUMMER
It must have been a night like this one,
Cool and transparent and somehow even-tempered,
Sitting on the friendly wooden porch of someone's
Summer house in mid-October in the country
…
It must have been so soothing to have him back
That no one studied him closely, no one noticed
That there was something askew, something
Dark and puzzling in his eyes, something deeply
Reluctant staring into the narrow, clear-eyed
Lens of the camera. I've imagined it all-
And tonight, so many light years afterwards,
Looking intently at a torn photograph
…
Tonight the past seems as sharp and inevitable
As the moment in Indian Summer when you glance up
From a photograph album and discover the fireflies
Pulsing in the woods in front of the house
RECOVERY
It was as if the rain could feel itself
falling through the air today, as if the air
could actually feel its own dampness, the breeze
could hear a familiar voice explaining the emptiness
to the dark elms that swayed unconsciously along
the wet road, the elms that could still feel
their own branches glistening with rain.
It was as if the sky had imagined a morning
of indigos and pinks, mauves and reddish-browns.
…
The road home was slick with lights
and everything seemed to be crying, just
this, just this, nothing more, nothing else!-
as if the morning were somehow conscious of itself.
When you leaned over and touched me on the arm
it was as if my arm needed to be touched
in that way, at exactly that time.
in Spite of Everything, the Stars
Like a stunned piano, like a bucket
of fresh milk flung into the air
or a dozen fists of confetti
thrown hard at a bride
stepping down from the altar,
the stars surprise the sky.
Think of dazed stones
floating overhead, or an ocean
of starfish hung up to dry. Yes,
like a conductor's expectant arm
about to lift toward the chorus,
or a juggler's plates defying gravity,
or a hundred fastballs fired at once
and freezing in midair, the stars
startle the sky over the city.
…
Because the night is alive with lamps!
That's why in dark houses all over the city
dreams stir in the pillows, a million
Plumes of breath rise into the sky.
February 24, 2021
Some particularly nice poems closed this book in the final section: “A Dark Hillside” (on the lonesomeness, and still latent magic, of the middle of the afternoon on a day in the middle of life, looking out the window at a hillside) and “Dawn Walk” (on how to celebrate snowy mornings and praise the fact that you are still alive) being my favorites.
The middle poems that centered around WWII Europe and Paul Celan didn’t quite work for me, but perhaps that’s because I wasn’t in the mood for them or felt that they were too different in voice and tone from the rest of the collection.
I enjoyed my time with this book though. Hirsch has a lovely plainspokenness, and a willingness to write about everyday things that others might not. He has the nerve to still be astounded by the night sky. And I love that.
The middle poems that centered around WWII Europe and Paul Celan didn’t quite work for me, but perhaps that’s because I wasn’t in the mood for them or felt that they were too different in voice and tone from the rest of the collection.
I enjoyed my time with this book though. Hirsch has a lovely plainspokenness, and a willingness to write about everyday things that others might not. He has the nerve to still be astounded by the night sky. And I love that.
February 4, 2024
Such a heartfelt collection of award winning poetry from a man with so much heartache. Wild Gratitude, what a great title, before the "gratitude" movement was a movement. There are so many things in this collection that Hirch is grateful for. He sees nature like looser but feels it more deeply in his writing. This is a required reading for tire of poetic anguish and poetry therapy. His writing is filled with imagery and symbolism but Hirsch makes it so easy to understand and appreciate.
July 13, 2018
This was a beautiful collection of poems. I will certainly be buying and reading others by Edward Hirsch. Almost all lyric, some haunting and many that were astonishing both in their use of language and their ability to capture the presence in a particular moment.
April 25, 2020
First time I’ve felt the urge to underline sections of a book. The imagery is so seamlessly sewn together, effortlessly making the mundane beautiful.
August 27, 2022
Trying to get into poetry but still woefully ignorant.
Also, read every word on the beach :)
Also, read every word on the beach :)
Read
March 5, 2023“Like a stunned piano, like a bucket
of fresh milk flung into the air
or a dozen fists of confetti
thrown hard at a bride
stepping down from the altar,
the stars surprise the sky.”
of fresh milk flung into the air
or a dozen fists of confetti
thrown hard at a bride
stepping down from the altar,
the stars surprise the sky.”
February 15, 2025
3.5
The good ones were great, but I disliked more poems than I liked.
The good ones were great, but I disliked more poems than I liked.
December 31, 2025
Well-crafted and often deeply sad set of poems. Makes me want to read his first book of poems, “The Sleepwalkers.”
December 12, 2016
So intimate is seems some of his words were exact experiences I've deeply felt my way through. One of the better more contemporary poets I have read thus far.
There were a few poems that brought me to tears, like The Emaciated Horse; it was haunting,moving and well-written,and the Poor Angels poem had beautiful ideas within it.
"I wanted the earth to roar in my lungs
And I missed the vowels of my own language"
There were a few poems that brought me to tears, like The Emaciated Horse; it was haunting,moving and well-written,and the Poor Angels poem had beautiful ideas within it.
"I wanted the earth to roar in my lungs
And I missed the vowels of my own language"
December 18, 2016
Very accessible poetry, although I think it lacks the mysterious power and strangeness of great poetry. But still I enjoyed many of these poems. He doesn't shy away from pain or ugly scenes, which is brave. I think that "Three Journeys" is my favorite. I also really enjoyed the lyricism in "The Secret" although I never experienced the boredom of childhood that he explores in the poem.
January 31, 2017
This is an excellent book of poetry. I believe I'll start reading more poetry and also start writing some poems again as well.
June 27, 2021
Years ago, this was my introduction to Hirsch and it holds up. The poetry in this collection is tight and beautiful with a sense of discovery.
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews