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For the Sleepwalkers
A reissuing of For the Sleepwalkers, poems by Edward Hirsch.
- GenresPoetry
88 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1981
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67 people want to read
About the author
Edward Hirsch
77 books173 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.
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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 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 1, 2025
I stumbled onto Edward Hirsch's work by total coincidence this past holiday season when on a total whim I had a moment to myself on Christmas Day and chose to read this book of his called "Gabriel" to pass the time because it was thin and short and had been sitting on my to-be-read shelf for quite some time. Needless to say, I sat on my floor enraptured start to finish, a whirlpool of conflicting emotions that cheery day, and throughout the festivities all I could think about was Hirsch's words repeating in my head, his stunning elegy to his son...
Which led me on a hunt to discover and get my desperate mind and hands on all the works he ever created.
"For The Sleepwalkers" did not disappoint.
I am not an expert on poetic form and hold no position to dictate what displays excellent skill when it comes to this genre—but like another reviewer here said years before me: when a poem hits, it hits hard... And right now, the poet whose poems have me in such a chokehold happens to be Edward Hirsch whose words I seek to drink up like some parched desert plant. What a talent to possess to make language so magical.
Which led me on a hunt to discover and get my desperate mind and hands on all the works he ever created.
"For The Sleepwalkers" did not disappoint.
I am not an expert on poetic form and hold no position to dictate what displays excellent skill when it comes to this genre—but like another reviewer here said years before me: when a poem hits, it hits hard... And right now, the poet whose poems have me in such a chokehold happens to be Edward Hirsch whose words I seek to drink up like some parched desert plant. What a talent to possess to make language so magical.
August 29, 2020
Some ekphrastic poems, some poems on travel/journey. Beautiful and exquisite. I must own this collection it-where to find it, as it was published in 1981.
April 3, 2012
I'll be totally honest here: I don't know what makes a poem good or bad. I'll usually have no other justification for liking a poem other than the fact that 'it sounded cool'. But I do know that when it hits, it hits hard. And Hirsch can hit me like no other poet when he's at his best.
And then you discover that it doesn't even matter.
And this is amazing. Because you still
Have to go on danging over the starless nets and
Under the nets of stars, climbing over dazed watery crowds
With your chipmunk's passion for movement, for circles.
And now whenever someone is repelled by your body
You think of the unspeakable reservoirs of the mind,
The silt, and the way a lake can continue rippling
Long after the last pebbles have finally disappeared.
Or how a vacancy rises up to surround the violent shock
Of a single rifle fired once on a pond in early winter.
Look, the ducks are sliding away from us toward the stars
Although the stars, millions of miles beyond, are already dead.
Sometimes when you stare up into their black, leafless vines
You can feel the awe, the silence and awe,
And the wind flapping against ropes and canvas sides.
Because you know now that whenever you move
There are whole centuries moving behind you.
Fossils cradle in your bones. The deepest oceans
Rise in your bird blood, yes, and you can already
Feel the distance in your lungs, the distance, and
The stillness spreading its blank wings inside you.
And then you discover that it doesn't even matter.
And this is amazing. Because you still
Have to go on danging over the starless nets and
Under the nets of stars, climbing over dazed watery crowds
With your chipmunk's passion for movement, for circles.
And now whenever someone is repelled by your body
You think of the unspeakable reservoirs of the mind,
The silt, and the way a lake can continue rippling
Long after the last pebbles have finally disappeared.
Or how a vacancy rises up to surround the violent shock
Of a single rifle fired once on a pond in early winter.
Look, the ducks are sliding away from us toward the stars
Although the stars, millions of miles beyond, are already dead.
Sometimes when you stare up into their black, leafless vines
You can feel the awe, the silence and awe,
And the wind flapping against ropes and canvas sides.
Because you know now that whenever you move
There are whole centuries moving behind you.
Fossils cradle in your bones. The deepest oceans
Rise in your bird blood, yes, and you can already
Feel the distance in your lungs, the distance, and
The stillness spreading its blank wings inside you.
May 7, 2011
I have read a great deal of Edward Hirsch's work, but I find this early work not as impressive as the later work, which is probably how it should be. I posted an earlier version of this review, but I got to thinking that, of the poems in the book, I enjoyed "Song" most, followed by "At Kresge's Diner in Stonefalls, Arkansas." Then, the first two poems in the book appealed to me: "Song Against Natural Selection" and "Apologia for Buzzards" In this case, I am fairly sure that it was the subject matter as well as the execution. After that, I liked the title poem, "For the Sleepwalker" and "Still Life: An Argument." If anybody asked me, I'd say read the poems I just mentioned from this book and then move on to later Hirsch work.
November 2, 2007
I'd have given this book five stars if only for the title poem! But there are plenty of more really wonderful, jaw-droppingly good ones in here: "Prelude to Spring" is up there with "Spring and All" by Williams as my favorite on the topic. There's a wonderful tribute to Marianne Moore. I'm also really taken by the language incredible imaginative leaps in the group of poems at the end of this book, "The Dark Sun".
September 20, 2014
Strong, bold poems on a variety of topics and people: owls, painters (Matisse, Klee), poets (Marianne Moore, Rilke), sex, death. The title poem is especially great and suspenseful. I felt like Hirsch was all over the place in this collection, but I suppose there is no rule that your book of poems has to be cohesive as a unit.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews