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The Lives of the Heart
A new volume of poems by the award-winning author of October Palace.
- GenresPoetry
128 pages, Paperback
Published August 2, 1997
13 people are currently reading
511 people want to read
About the author
Jane Hirshfield
71 books619 followersJane Hirshfield is the author of nine collections of poetry, including the forthcoming Ledger (Knopf, March 2020), The Beauty (Knopf, 2015), longlisted for the National Book Award, Come Thief (Knopf, August 23, 2011), After (HarperCollins, 2006), which was named a “Best Book of 2006” by The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, and England’s Financial Times and shortlisted for England’s T.S. Eliot Award; and Given Sugar, Given Salt (finalist for the 2001 National Book Critics Circle Award); as well as two now-classic books of essays, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry and Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World. She has also edited and co-translated three books collecting the work of women poets from the distant past, and one e-book on Basho and the development of haiku, The Heart of Haiku. Hirshfield’s other honors include The Poetry Center Book Award, the California Book Award, fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the 40th Annual Distinguished Achievement Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets, an honor previously received by Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, and William Carlos Williams. Her work has been featured in ten editions of The Best American Poems and appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Times Literary Supplement/TLS, The American Poetry Review, Poetry, The New York Review of Books, Orion, McSweeney’s, and elsewhere. Hirshfield’s poems have also been featured many times on Garrison Keillor’s Writers Almanac as well as two Bill Moyers’ PBS television specials. She has presented her poems and taught at festivals and universities throughout the U.S., in China, Japan, the Middle East, the U.K., Poland, and Ireland. In 2019, she was elected into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
Hirshfield's appearance schedule can be found at:
Hirshfield's appearance schedule can be found at:
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 42 reviews
September 23, 2017
Jane Hirshfield is coming to my village in a couple weeks so I thought I would read some of her work, on the suggestion of my friend and poet Jenn. This is my first experience of her work, and I thought it was bold to take on this subject (of love) and try to make something new of it. I very much liked the poems; she brings a Buddhist sensibility to language and image. She reads and reflects the reading in her poems of Chinese poetry.
The Heart’s Counting Knows Only One
In Sung China,
two monks friends for sixty years
watched the geese pass.
Where are they going?
one tested the other, who couldn't say.
That moment's silence continues.
No one will study their friendship
in the koan-books of insight.
No one will remember their names.
I think of them sometimes,
standing, perplexed by sadness,
goose-down sewn into their quilted autumn robes.
Almost swallowed by the vastness of the mountains,
but not yet.
As the barely audible
geese are not yet swallowed;
as even we, my love, will not entirely be lost.
Or this one:
Changing Everything
I was walking again
in the woods,
a yellow light
was sifting all I saw.
Willfully,
with a cold heart,
I took a stick,
lifted it to the opposite side
of the path.
There, I said to myself,
that's done now.
Brushing one hand against the other,
to clean them
of the tiny fragments of bark.
Her rendition of the varieties of love in this volume is not the reflection of a young person but of one with experience of heartache and complexity as much as passion.
Here’s some other lines/images I liked:
“How silently the heart pivots on its hinge.”
“To sit there among the petals, altering nothing.”
“The rains come, the deer slip back into the mountains like hungry, rose-colored smoke.”
Of a mare she sees: “The way the left ear swivels into dream.”
This is the poetry of small observations, of subtle gestures, and “do not-doing,” as Lao Tsu urged us.
“More and more wanting to learn how to leave things be.”
I can't wait to hear her read and meet her!
The Heart’s Counting Knows Only One
In Sung China,
two monks friends for sixty years
watched the geese pass.
Where are they going?
one tested the other, who couldn't say.
That moment's silence continues.
No one will study their friendship
in the koan-books of insight.
No one will remember their names.
I think of them sometimes,
standing, perplexed by sadness,
goose-down sewn into their quilted autumn robes.
Almost swallowed by the vastness of the mountains,
but not yet.
As the barely audible
geese are not yet swallowed;
as even we, my love, will not entirely be lost.
Or this one:
Changing Everything
I was walking again
in the woods,
a yellow light
was sifting all I saw.
Willfully,
with a cold heart,
I took a stick,
lifted it to the opposite side
of the path.
There, I said to myself,
that's done now.
Brushing one hand against the other,
to clean them
of the tiny fragments of bark.
Her rendition of the varieties of love in this volume is not the reflection of a young person but of one with experience of heartache and complexity as much as passion.
Here’s some other lines/images I liked:
“How silently the heart pivots on its hinge.”
“To sit there among the petals, altering nothing.”
“The rains come, the deer slip back into the mountains like hungry, rose-colored smoke.”
Of a mare she sees: “The way the left ear swivels into dream.”
This is the poetry of small observations, of subtle gestures, and “do not-doing,” as Lao Tsu urged us.
“More and more wanting to learn how to leave things be.”
I can't wait to hear her read and meet her!
January 19, 2025
With beautiful imagery and metaphor, this volume reads like dream written. You can feel her reflective stillness, a subtle thread of wonder at the cycle and seasons of the heart. There’s a few lines in a poem entitled, The Fire, that seem fitting:
Why else take up
the body’s single candle,
if not to see
how everything is consumed?
She takes her candle and minds the cadence of the wax, and with great effect.
I have been looking for something like this, stylistically, for quite some time. This is my first read of Ms. Hirshfield (with more on the way). While reading I kept thinking the phrase, ‘Solve & Coagula.’ It’s an alchemical principle that translates to ‘dissolve and coagulate.’ The symbolism of dissolving and rebuilding in perpetual transformation is fully present in these pages, pumping the spectrum blood of complexities and mysteries of the ineffable. Even the choice of the cover art, to the last lines of the book, are saturated with this continuous cycle of impermanence (yet full of life) and both minor and major arcana gently guide us:
There is a door. It opens. Then it is closed. But a slip of light
strays, like a scrap of unreadable paper left on the floor,
or the one red leaf the snow releases in March.
The end of March or beginning of April the rightful start of the New Year, and the rebirth of the four natural seasons; she manages to shift through these phases seamlessly but without mentioning it. The transitions are beautiful.
In the first poem there is a birth of what is practical and physical, with the title of the poem stating as much:
The Lives of the Heart
Are ligneous, muscular, chemical.
But, from the next lines and throughout the remainder of the book she smiths incredible images with well chosen layers of the tangible, the abstract, and the miraculous. Aren't these what a heart tries to make sense of in every chest?
There is so much gold here that it is hard to chose what to share. In any case, here are a few poems, of nearly all, that seem to resonate closely with me:
Matter and Spirit
A shadow empties itself into a river.
No one sees.
But the cloth for washing the bodies of the dead
softens, gentles a little.
Neither the cloth nor the body feels this,
yet it matters. Someone else, you see, is there,
in the blunt and blind of grace—
someone stands silent,
listening, the looped cotton held in her hand.
Each Happiness Ringed by Lions
Sometimes when
I take you into my body
I can almost see them—patient, circling.
Almost glimpse the moving shadow of the tail,
almost hear the hushed pad of retracted claws.
It is the moment—of this I am certain—
when they themselves are least sure.
It is the moment they could almost let us go free.
The World Loved by Moonlight
You must try,
The voice said, to become colder.
I understood at once.
It is like the bodies of gods: cast in bronze,
Braced in stone. Only something heartless
Could bear the full weight.
Def worth a close read. Enjoy!
Why else take up
the body’s single candle,
if not to see
how everything is consumed?
She takes her candle and minds the cadence of the wax, and with great effect.
I have been looking for something like this, stylistically, for quite some time. This is my first read of Ms. Hirshfield (with more on the way). While reading I kept thinking the phrase, ‘Solve & Coagula.’ It’s an alchemical principle that translates to ‘dissolve and coagulate.’ The symbolism of dissolving and rebuilding in perpetual transformation is fully present in these pages, pumping the spectrum blood of complexities and mysteries of the ineffable. Even the choice of the cover art, to the last lines of the book, are saturated with this continuous cycle of impermanence (yet full of life) and both minor and major arcana gently guide us:
There is a door. It opens. Then it is closed. But a slip of light
strays, like a scrap of unreadable paper left on the floor,
or the one red leaf the snow releases in March.
The end of March or beginning of April the rightful start of the New Year, and the rebirth of the four natural seasons; she manages to shift through these phases seamlessly but without mentioning it. The transitions are beautiful.
In the first poem there is a birth of what is practical and physical, with the title of the poem stating as much:
The Lives of the Heart
Are ligneous, muscular, chemical.
But, from the next lines and throughout the remainder of the book she smiths incredible images with well chosen layers of the tangible, the abstract, and the miraculous. Aren't these what a heart tries to make sense of in every chest?
There is so much gold here that it is hard to chose what to share. In any case, here are a few poems, of nearly all, that seem to resonate closely with me:
Matter and Spirit
A shadow empties itself into a river.
No one sees.
But the cloth for washing the bodies of the dead
softens, gentles a little.
Neither the cloth nor the body feels this,
yet it matters. Someone else, you see, is there,
in the blunt and blind of grace—
someone stands silent,
listening, the looped cotton held in her hand.
Each Happiness Ringed by Lions
Sometimes when
I take you into my body
I can almost see them—patient, circling.
Almost glimpse the moving shadow of the tail,
almost hear the hushed pad of retracted claws.
It is the moment—of this I am certain—
when they themselves are least sure.
It is the moment they could almost let us go free.
The World Loved by Moonlight
You must try,
The voice said, to become colder.
I understood at once.
It is like the bodies of gods: cast in bronze,
Braced in stone. Only something heartless
Could bear the full weight.
Def worth a close read. Enjoy!
November 11, 2021
Not much to say. It was average. There were some really good poems but overall it was ok. Probably wouldn’t read again; a bit boring.
June 21, 2009
I wasn’t much of a fan of “October Palace”, but I like to give everyone a second chance. It worked well for Jerome Rothenberg, after all. So, I thought I’d give “The Lives of the Heart” a chance and the title poem was, unusually, the poem to kick off the book. It wasn’t new ground, but Hirshfield kept it fresh and interesting as she explained the heart in many different degrees: “can be skinned for garnets”, “[l:]eave the strange kiss of their bodies/in Burgess Shale,” “[l:]ie dormant until they are opened by ice,/by drought. Go blind in the service of lace.” It was loose and free-flowing; I felt connected to it right away. I was excited because I thought the rest of the book would follow the same pattern and feeling. Unfortunately, the title poem was (I felt) the strongest poem and soon the book fell into a lull.
It’s easy to read, and I can see why people like it, but it was too tame for me, too carefully laid out (“Beloved, what can be, what was,/will be taken from us./Sorry. I knew no better” and, “He pauses, lowers his head to/a stone and some leaves./Night deepens, the rain falls harder./He lifts his head and goes on.”) . Everything was too quiet, every word had a place and it was kept neat and tidy, like a great-grandmother’s house that was too delicate to play or spin around in. The poems struck me as very passive and slow: “the old horse waits in his pasture.//He knows the field for exactly what it is:/his limitless mare, his beloved” (this was taken from “Not Moving Even One Step”, but I did like the last line: “How silently the heart pivots on its hinge”).
In other poems, there’s a murkiness, like something moving around muddy water, but never quite getting close to you (“Secretive Heart”: “Heart falters, stops/before a Chine cauldron/still good for boiling water”). Sometimes I felt like there was so much emphasis on her meditations that she lost the reader (“The audience applauds./The mime stops holding his breath.//Outside the theater, rain begins to fall.”)
Nature was a constant theme and I admit that I’m not the biggest fan of nature poems; I prefer poems that deal with human nature. So, I can see why I didn’t connect that well with a lot of her poems. However, like I’ve stated, many of her poems are just very quiet, like they’ve been hushed. I’d love to see more punch.
“Mule Heart” was an odd spin, but I found myself liking it: “Do not let its sparse mane deceive you,/or the way the left ear swivels in dream.” “Not-Yet” started off too ordinary, “Morning of buttered toast; of coffee, sweetened, with milk”, but I enjoyed it in the end. “The Gift” was good, but more suited to Stacey (horse love and all). I liked “Late Prayer”: “a single nail, single ruby-/all the heavens and hells./They rattle in the heart and make one sound.”
The worst line (that made me cringe) was from “Mele in Gabbia”: “I eat them/in this good place-/the pastry warm,/a little bit chewy,/the linen/impeccably white-/and consider.” It felt like it came right out of a poetry exercise in high school. With as many credits as Hirshfield has (she’s been in some major magazines), I expected something better.
But I don’t want to seem like the book was an abomination, it wasn’t. It just didn’t move me. I warmed up to her a little in part 2 and 3, but never felt a deep connection. My favourites would be the title poem, “The Clock”, and “Lying”.
Bottom-line: Not my thing. Too quiet.
Extras:
Persimmons: spotted on page 50
It’s easy to read, and I can see why people like it, but it was too tame for me, too carefully laid out (“Beloved, what can be, what was,/will be taken from us./Sorry. I knew no better” and, “He pauses, lowers his head to/a stone and some leaves./Night deepens, the rain falls harder./He lifts his head and goes on.”) . Everything was too quiet, every word had a place and it was kept neat and tidy, like a great-grandmother’s house that was too delicate to play or spin around in. The poems struck me as very passive and slow: “the old horse waits in his pasture.//He knows the field for exactly what it is:/his limitless mare, his beloved” (this was taken from “Not Moving Even One Step”, but I did like the last line: “How silently the heart pivots on its hinge”).
In other poems, there’s a murkiness, like something moving around muddy water, but never quite getting close to you (“Secretive Heart”: “Heart falters, stops/before a Chine cauldron/still good for boiling water”). Sometimes I felt like there was so much emphasis on her meditations that she lost the reader (“The audience applauds./The mime stops holding his breath.//Outside the theater, rain begins to fall.”)
Nature was a constant theme and I admit that I’m not the biggest fan of nature poems; I prefer poems that deal with human nature. So, I can see why I didn’t connect that well with a lot of her poems. However, like I’ve stated, many of her poems are just very quiet, like they’ve been hushed. I’d love to see more punch.
“Mule Heart” was an odd spin, but I found myself liking it: “Do not let its sparse mane deceive you,/or the way the left ear swivels in dream.” “Not-Yet” started off too ordinary, “Morning of buttered toast; of coffee, sweetened, with milk”, but I enjoyed it in the end. “The Gift” was good, but more suited to Stacey (horse love and all). I liked “Late Prayer”: “a single nail, single ruby-/all the heavens and hells./They rattle in the heart and make one sound.”
The worst line (that made me cringe) was from “Mele in Gabbia”: “I eat them/in this good place-/the pastry warm,/a little bit chewy,/the linen/impeccably white-/and consider.” It felt like it came right out of a poetry exercise in high school. With as many credits as Hirshfield has (she’s been in some major magazines), I expected something better.
But I don’t want to seem like the book was an abomination, it wasn’t. It just didn’t move me. I warmed up to her a little in part 2 and 3, but never felt a deep connection. My favourites would be the title poem, “The Clock”, and “Lying”.
Bottom-line: Not my thing. Too quiet.
Extras:
Persimmons: spotted on page 50
November 28, 2024
How silently the heart pivots on its hinge
I've been reading this book of poetry for 7 months. The poems are rich and satisfying, not to be gorged or gulped, feasts of new memories made of things we all have on hand.
The first poem, "The Lives of the Heart" stabbed me, blew my head off, made me joyful and sorrowful in quick, alternating successions. It made me want to give this book to everyone I know, even the ones who don't like poetry, to put it in their hands and say, "Here, you must read this. Your soul is in here."
There were other poems, too, that were also the sounds of silent pivots of the heart. And a few poems where all I could say was, "I don't understand." But I did understand. I understood the cadence, I understood the never-ending now, the way the heart opens and closes and opens again. I understood them in a way that is the truth and is strange in its plaintive, honest voice heard at a distance. It traverses the complete course of the body. At the end, I think I even grasped the Lion she often writes about, life's fear, that primitive fierce force which we all possess and also face.
Here she writes about a horse, as she often does.
"Not Moving Even One Step"
The rain falling too lightly to shape
an audible horse, an audible tree,
and, soaking, the old horse waits in his pasture.
He knows the field for exactly what it is:
his limitless mare, his beloved.
Even the mallards sleep in her red body maned
in thistles, hooved in the new green shallows of spring.
Slow rain streams from fetlocks, hips, the lowered head,
while she stands in the place beside him that no one sees.
The muzzles almost touch,
How silently the heart pivots on its hinge.
I want to read everything Hirshfield has ever put on paper.
My own humble tribute of thanks to her:
The reader is eating bread and butter
The bread, poetry in elastic chews,
The butter, salt of faith on top.
I've been reading this book of poetry for 7 months. The poems are rich and satisfying, not to be gorged or gulped, feasts of new memories made of things we all have on hand.
The first poem, "The Lives of the Heart" stabbed me, blew my head off, made me joyful and sorrowful in quick, alternating successions. It made me want to give this book to everyone I know, even the ones who don't like poetry, to put it in their hands and say, "Here, you must read this. Your soul is in here."
There were other poems, too, that were also the sounds of silent pivots of the heart. And a few poems where all I could say was, "I don't understand." But I did understand. I understood the cadence, I understood the never-ending now, the way the heart opens and closes and opens again. I understood them in a way that is the truth and is strange in its plaintive, honest voice heard at a distance. It traverses the complete course of the body. At the end, I think I even grasped the Lion she often writes about, life's fear, that primitive fierce force which we all possess and also face.
Here she writes about a horse, as she often does.
"Not Moving Even One Step"
The rain falling too lightly to shape
an audible horse, an audible tree,
and, soaking, the old horse waits in his pasture.
He knows the field for exactly what it is:
his limitless mare, his beloved.
Even the mallards sleep in her red body maned
in thistles, hooved in the new green shallows of spring.
Slow rain streams from fetlocks, hips, the lowered head,
while she stands in the place beside him that no one sees.
The muzzles almost touch,
How silently the heart pivots on its hinge.
I want to read everything Hirshfield has ever put on paper.
My own humble tribute of thanks to her:
The reader is eating bread and butter
The bread, poetry in elastic chews,
The butter, salt of faith on top.
November 6, 2015
The first dozen poems are interesting, but at some remove. After 20-some pages, Jane Hirshfield gets my attention and mostly keeps it. A title like The Lives of the Heart should offer a variety of opportunities for engagement, and this collection does. The heart in nature, the aging heart, the thoughtful heart and grieving heart all get a turn. Hirshfield's word-craft is considerable. This one merits a place on my small shelf of poetry to read over and over.
"As the thoughts of a person
in age sometimes grow sparer,
like a great cleanness comes into a room,
the soul may grow sparer;
one sparrow song carves it completely.
And still the room is full,
and still the heart."
"There is more and more I tell no one,
strangers nor loves.
This slips into the heart
without hurry, as if it had never been.
And yet, among the trees, something has changed.
Something looks back from the trees,
and knows me for who I am."
"I want the way
this water sees without eyes,
hears without ears,
shivers without will or fear
at the gentlest touch.
I want the way it lets
all of it pass
without judgment or comment.
...
O heart, if you
will not, cannot, give me the lake,
then give me the song."
"As the thoughts of a person
in age sometimes grow sparer,
like a great cleanness comes into a room,
the soul may grow sparer;
one sparrow song carves it completely.
And still the room is full,
and still the heart."
"There is more and more I tell no one,
strangers nor loves.
This slips into the heart
without hurry, as if it had never been.
And yet, among the trees, something has changed.
Something looks back from the trees,
and knows me for who I am."
"I want the way
this water sees without eyes,
hears without ears,
shivers without will or fear
at the gentlest touch.
I want the way it lets
all of it pass
without judgment or comment.
...
O heart, if you
will not, cannot, give me the lake,
then give me the song."
May 27, 2021
A friend turned me onto Jane Hirshfield when she sent her poem about saving an ant, written at the beginning of lockdown. Find it; it is worth your time. It took me a little while to seek out a collection, because I was busy introducing myself to non-White poets, but I finally came around.
As I have said, I don't really have the language to critique poetry, so I'll just give you a sliver of the art of this attentive, gentle craftswoman. One that could have been written during the pandemic, but was not:
A Month of Days and Nights
Days that could have
been anything,
nights that could have been anything,
turned with the leaves.
Then, someone played
the piano -
halting,
unpracticed and perfect.
I listened to pity
and lowered my head in shame.
Ashamed not at my tears,
or even at what has been wasted,
but to have been dry-eyed so long.
As I have said, I don't really have the language to critique poetry, so I'll just give you a sliver of the art of this attentive, gentle craftswoman. One that could have been written during the pandemic, but was not:
A Month of Days and Nights
Days that could have
been anything,
nights that could have been anything,
turned with the leaves.
Then, someone played
the piano -
halting,
unpracticed and perfect.
I listened to pity
and lowered my head in shame.
Ashamed not at my tears,
or even at what has been wasted,
but to have been dry-eyed so long.
April 27, 2024
The Lives of the Heart is an impeccable collection and brilliant showcase of Jane Hirshfield's exquisite talent. It contains the two poems that introduced me to the work of this poet when I was a teen; 'Late Prayer' and 'A Room', two favourites I found in anthologies, along with two new favourites; 'The Fire' and 'Each Moment a White Bull Steps Shining into the World'.
Jane Hirshfield has thus become my favourite poet.
Jane Hirshfield has thus become my favourite poet.
January 21, 2013
One of the few books of poetry I read from cover to cover and that I return to several times a year.
Hirshfield was brave to tackle such tried subject as "the heart." But she meets the match with a quiet strength and brilliant perception.
Hirshfield was brave to tackle such tried subject as "the heart." But she meets the match with a quiet strength and brilliant perception.
August 14, 2021
2.5 stars. There were some poems like the last two that were wondrous and left me open. Probably five or six overall; had those poems been the book I probably would've rated it 5 stars. Many of the other poems felt mundane or inconsequential; I have seen mundanity made beautiful just by the angle of one's looking/writing, bur I did not feel that in those poems. Having read Hirshfield's prose and having listened to her speak I see, however, that that could change with further reading. My openness to re-reading this book is likely biased because of her Buddhist leanings and the worldview these poems suggest. Overall, I'd say I still enjoy Hirshfield's prose more, but I'd like to read more of her poetry. I'll probably come back to this book—at least for the ones that stayed with me. And I imagine I'll at least read one other collection, too.
January 31, 2024
Despite all the intellectualizing of her feelings, the poet manages to taste the sweetness of her lovers’ apples and figs, smell the “plum fragrant spring” of love as it blossoms, and let her “raving heart” sing. “Three Times My Life Has Opened” is a masterpiece.
Favorite Poems:
“The Lives of the Heart”
“The Heart’s Counting Knows Only One”
“Standing Deer”
“The Adamantine Perfection of Desire”
“Studying Wu Wei, Muir Beach”
“Hope and Love”
“Respite”
“The Four-Postered Beds of Mycenae”
“Letting What Enters Enter”
“Lake and Maple”
“The Poet”
“A Room”
“Lion and Angel Dividing the Maple Between Them”
“Three Times My Life Has Opened”
Favorite Poems:
“The Lives of the Heart”
“The Heart’s Counting Knows Only One”
“Standing Deer”
“The Adamantine Perfection of Desire”
“Studying Wu Wei, Muir Beach”
“Hope and Love”
“Respite”
“The Four-Postered Beds of Mycenae”
“Letting What Enters Enter”
“Lake and Maple”
“The Poet”
“A Room”
“Lion and Angel Dividing the Maple Between Them”
“Three Times My Life Has Opened”
October 23, 2020
I couldn't remember why Jane Hirshfield sounded so familiar to me when I found this book, but then I remembered I'd read a previous poetry compilation of hers and hated it. Same ole, same ole. "On the Beach" and "Talc" were the only poems in this collection that I liked in their entirety. Some other lines or stanzas were decent here and there, but overall, most of Hirshfield's poems elicited from me a reaction of purely, ???????
January 13, 2019
I have loved all of Hirshfield's translations, but this is my favorite of her original works (so far). Her poems are all so rich in emotion, whether the topic be seemingly banal (Leaf, Lake and Maple, The Bearded Woman) or deeply personal (Manners/Rwanda, Salt Heart, Talc).
September 11, 2019
In her review S said, "A few poems resonated with me here and there, but mostly this collection wasn’t for me." My feelings exactly. She has some lovely images, but for me too much heaven and hell, Eastern mysticism, and lots of leaves.
December 12, 2024
Tenderness does not choose its own uses.
It goes out to everything equally,
circling rabbit and hawk.
Look: in the iron bucket,
a single nail, a single ruby--
all the heavens and hells.
They rattle in the heart and make one sound.
It goes out to everything equally,
circling rabbit and hawk.
Look: in the iron bucket,
a single nail, a single ruby--
all the heavens and hells.
They rattle in the heart and make one sound.
May 30, 2018
Beautiful. Ingenious.
January 26, 2019
For me, not nearly as resonant as her other collections. (I find this comforting; just knowing that she is not always incomparable makes me feel better about my own writing.)
February 8, 2019
A few poems resonated with me here and there, but mostly this collection wasn’t for me.
February 4, 2021
3 on some, 500000 on others.
March 16, 2021
I listened to pity
and lowered my head in shame.
Ashamed not at my tears,
or even at what has been wasted,
but to have been dry-eyed so long.
and lowered my head in shame.
Ashamed not at my tears,
or even at what has been wasted,
but to have been dry-eyed so long.
December 25, 2021
I liked some poems more than others.
January 9, 2023
3.5 rounded up
Read
January 17, 2017Really liked the poems in part two, which seemed to de-familiarize common sights; part three was kinda Buddhist.
January 14, 2014
Jane Hirshfield is one of the best contemporary poets in the genre of Buddhist writing. In The Lives of the Heart, Hirshfield encourages living simply, productively, and creatively in the present.
Hirshfield's poems are "simple complexities," exploring common Buddhist themes such as interconnectedness, enlightenment, and impermanence.
In "Respite," Hirshfield communes with the natural world around her: "Day after quiet day passes. I speak to no one besides the dog. To her, I murmur much I would not otherwise say."
In "Changing Everything," Hirshfield describes encountering barriers on the path to enlightenment as walking along a trail and removing branches: "Willfully with a cold heart, I took a stick, lifted it to the opposite side."
In "Standing Deer," Hirshfield describes the memory of a life fulfilled and the irresistible urge to continue grasping: "As the house of a person in age sometimes grows cluttered with what is
too loved or too heavy to part with the heart may grow cluttered.
And still the house will be emptied, and still the heart."
Think of this collection as a beginning to reading Hirshfield. Next, try "After."
Hirshfield's poems are "simple complexities," exploring common Buddhist themes such as interconnectedness, enlightenment, and impermanence.
In "Respite," Hirshfield communes with the natural world around her: "Day after quiet day passes. I speak to no one besides the dog. To her, I murmur much I would not otherwise say."
In "Changing Everything," Hirshfield describes encountering barriers on the path to enlightenment as walking along a trail and removing branches: "Willfully with a cold heart, I took a stick, lifted it to the opposite side."
In "Standing Deer," Hirshfield describes the memory of a life fulfilled and the irresistible urge to continue grasping: "As the house of a person in age sometimes grows cluttered with what is
too loved or too heavy to part with the heart may grow cluttered.
And still the house will be emptied, and still the heart."
Think of this collection as a beginning to reading Hirshfield. Next, try "After."
July 11, 2025
Hirschfield had somehow escaped my attention all these years, but fellow Porch Poet Roberta Hatcher mentioned her with praise, and others chimed in as well, and I put her on my list. This is the second volume of Hirschfield's I've read, and she is firmly on my A-list.
The poems in the first three sections are solid, but did not especially speak to me. My only notes were a comparison of "Manners/Rwanda" to an Ann Cumins piece in McSweeney's #12, and a complaint about mistaking the Grey Sisters for the Fates.
But Part Four had me flagging four poems for mention: "Reading Chinese Poetry Before Dawn" "Letter to Hugo from Later" "The Poet" and "Spell to Be Said upon Departure".
The collection is good, those four were special. Recommended.
The poems in the first three sections are solid, but did not especially speak to me. My only notes were a comparison of "Manners/Rwanda" to an Ann Cumins piece in McSweeney's #12, and a complaint about mistaking the Grey Sisters for the Fates.
But Part Four had me flagging four poems for mention: "Reading Chinese Poetry Before Dawn" "Letter to Hugo from Later" "The Poet" and "Spell to Be Said upon Departure".
The collection is good, those four were special. Recommended.
June 24, 2009
I love this book and am currently re-reading my autographed copy. These poems are gorgeous--I love Hirshfield's imaginings of heart. My favorite poem, which I have memorized and am currently reciting to myself, is Da Capo. "Begin again the story of your life." I need to hear these words over and over. Their cadence is comforting and strong.
January 5, 2020
I quite liked the (title) heart cycle, the deer, the fish, the mule, and a few scattered others - those with quietude or seeking now-ness, those meeting grief head-on. Others read more like standard love poems. Of course we can never like all of a poet's work just the same, and those will be someone else's favorites.
July 12, 2011
Loved this book so much. She set the bar high for me and I compare a lot of poetry I've read since to the feelings and imagery that reading this collection evoked in me.
The author writes beautifully about the heart as the centre of as well as a metaphor for everything else in life.
The author writes beautifully about the heart as the centre of as well as a metaphor for everything else in life.
February 8, 2013
This was the first time I had read anything by Jane Hirshfield and I loved her work. The collection varied stylistically, but they were all full of vivid imagery that let me reflect on my own personal experiences and the subtle "tea scent of jasmine."
August 1, 2016
I may not be an astute critic of this book. I have only started to read poetry in any kind of intentional manner. But what the hell. This lady amazes me. I love her work
I'm reading her essays on poetry now and I ha e to tell you they are fantastic.
I'm reading her essays on poetry now and I ha e to tell you they are fantastic.
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