Stranger by Night: Poems

by Edward Hirsch

In his seventieth year, the award-winning poet looks back on what was and accepts what is, in a deeply moving and beautiful sequence about what sustains him.Beginning with "My Friends Don't Get Buried," the lament of a delinquent mourner as his friends have begun to die, and ending with the plaintive note to self "don't write elegies/anymore," Edward Hirsch takes us backward through the decades in these memory poems of startling immediacy. He recalls the black dress a lover wore when he couldn't yet know the tragedy of her burning spirit; the radiance of an autumn day in Detroit when his students smoked outside, passionately discussing Shelley; the day he got off late from a railyard shift and missed an antiwar demonstration. There are direct and indirect elegies to lost contemporaries like Mark Strand, William Meredith, and, most especially, his longtime compatriot Philip Levine, whom he honors in several poems about daily work in the late midcentury Midwest. As the poet ages and begins to lose his peripheral vision, the world is "stranger by night," but these elegant, heart-stirring poems shed light on a lifetime that inevitably contains both sorrow and joy.

Genres: Poetry, Grief, American, Nonfiction

81 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 11, 2020

About the author

Edward 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.

Reviews

[Alarie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Back before I realized I was a poet, I took a lot of poetry workshops from masters like Hirsch. He was approachable, encouraging, and wanted everyone to learn to love poetry. All that comes through in this collection. Yes, there are elegy poems, but this book is balanced by a celebration of Hirsch’s memories. His poems are warm, sometimes funny or self-deprecating, and move quickly (without stanza breaks). I didn’t want them to end, so I slowed my pace by stopping often to reread.

Hirsch is matter of fact about life’s losses, takes a so that’s how it is, but I’d rather talk about this wonderful thing I’ve noticed today or enjoyed 40 years ago approach. This poem is one of my favorite examples.

“A Baker Swept By

You were already
losing your eyesight
last winter in Rome
when you passed in the doorway
at nine o’clock on a Saturday morning
and a baker swept by
on a shiny bicycle
waving a cap and singing
under his breath,
you didn’t know bakers wore
white aprons dusted with flour
and floated around the city
like angels
on a freshly baked day,…”


I hope the Pennsylvania students in this poem were at half as delighted as Hirsch when he set out by train. This is the poem I read several times over with a smile.

“….I was traveling to teach
Japanese poetry,
stray flashes of beauty,
to a high school classroom,
but for a moment
I sat down on a wooden bench
flooded with sunlight.
Nothing moved,
time stopped like a question
on the dusty clock in the corner,
and blue swallows
hovered over
the fire cherry.
I could hear an endless hush
in the mountains.”

(from “In the Endless Mountains”)

[Jas · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are a few poems in this collection that stood out to me, but overall this was a beautiful collection. It's a kind way to contemplate getting older and how life just goes on without being overly morbid or depressing. And I really liked that.

[Rich Farrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first encountered Hirsch and his poetry at the opening of The Poetry Foundation about a decade ago. I don’t recall a ton about the event, except as a college student at the end of my studies, I was overwhelmed with the who’s who of poets reading and signing. I think it may have been part of Lit Fest, which drew me to and away from the building, but if I could go back in time I would’ve just parked it there.

Anyway, I listened to Hirsch read and he signed a copy of Wild Gratitude that I picked up there and I haven’t thought too much beyond that until I saw this new collection and thought I’d give it a read.

I know these are reflective, in some cases confessional poems. From a less experienced poet, I might disregard a collection like this, but Hirsch hit all of the right notes. It stirred emotion and nostalgia and, although I sound foolish writing this, I didn’t know he grew up where I just moved to, which was an extra treat. I “get” his musings on moments spent teaching and growing up in the suburbs and know the roads he mentions. It’s a beautiful collection of poems, even if one doesn’t make any personal connections.

[Annie Yotova · Rating 4 out of 5]

The 10th collection from Hirsh, published 40 years after his first, has a very somber tone. It almost feels like a goodbye - half of the poems are about his friends dying (including Philip Levine, William Meredith and Mark Strand - his peers and friends in his craft), the other half are a walk down memory line to past times and past people and sometimes even past places.

The somber tone never really changes but some of the memory poems have a lighter tone - there is some lifting of the clouds. But the sun never really shows up - the overarching images are the ones of cemeteries and funerals, of loss and sorrow.

To all that is added the very personal loss of Hirsh - he started losing his eyesight. A set of poems towards the end of the book deals with that and they are as heart-breaking as anything else in this collection.

For a slim collection, it was a hard work reading it. The poems were sometimes too forceful and the darkness kept coming. Even the lighter ones had enough darkness in them to add to the overall gloominess. The collection makes you think of death and loss - and that is not always a comfortable feeling.

I've read a few of those poems before in various magazines and journals. They are dark but they almost seem to contain a ray of hope on their own. Assembled into a collection, read in the order selected by the author (and the editors), feeding each other, that hope is lost and it is all about the darkness in all its forms. And even the ones that do not work on their own for me add to the overall feeling.

And it is the very last poem that hits the hardest. On its face it is one of the lighter ones. But when a collection full of elegies ends with one called "Don't write elegies", it makes you pause. It is almost a denial of the whole collection. And at the same time it is also a closing chapter - all the elegies are now written, it is someone else's turn to write and mourn, it is time to move on.

[T.J. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Unveiling
Instead of a pebble to mark our grief
or a coin to ease his passage
you placed a speaker
at the top of his head
and suddenly a drumbeat
came blasting out of the grass,
startling the mourners on the far side
of the cemetery, clanging the trees,
scattering the swifts
that had gathered around the stone
like souls of the dead,
souls that were now parting
to make way for a noisy spirit
rising out of the dirt.

[Zach · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice little poems, particularly the ones reflecting on how to keep living when many of your friends are passed. I’ve yet to learn that feeling but suspect that Hirsch captured something essential about it. Would particularly recommend this collection for people who usually get turned off by poetry; it’s got an unassuming breeziness to it.

[Marg · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really don't select poetry to read unless it has been assigned to me for some reason. In the interest of expanding myself to new styles and new works I selected this book of poems quite randomly from the shelf. Hirsch's collection of poems altered my feeling and my thinking. What an incredible work of art.

[Keith · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Stranger by Night, Hirsch offers up reminiscences in the form of effortless time-travel, riding a bus or a train to a particular year, a potent moment in Russia, New York, or Chicago. Meanwhile in the present, in his seventieth year, he meditates funerals and the passing of several friends. The subtle surprise turns at the ends of his poems offer a Master class in how to conclude a poem!

[April · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first found Hirsch by way of the excellent novel “ An Unnecessary Woman “ by Alameddine. Among many literary references were the lines from “Happiness Writes White” (by Hirsch), “My head is like skylight, My heart is like dawn.” I was hooked.

This latest collection is heavily nostalgic. Some favourites are the titular “Stranger by Night” , “Days of 1975”, and “When You Write The Story”.

[Amanda Blankenborg · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was my first dip into a book of poetry. I was gifted this LAST christmas and finally got arounf to reading it over the last week.

The poems centre around grief which has been nice to read along side the goldfinch by Donna Tartt.

Some made my teary, some made my pensive, some didn't grab me at all. But that's art

[Leonard · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love these poems by Hirsch. They're like little peep holes looking at a small part of an interesting and inquisitive life. Really nice reading and probably good for people who don't usually read poetry.

[Emily Ann Meagher · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Reckless love poems, shocked elegies
drafted against death
looking for God—
some of them shattered
in desperation
on the rocks below,
but others, like this one,
bobbed away
on surging blue waves
for someone to find them.”

[Jenifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review to come soon.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would love to read more of his poetry and books. Simple yet layered.

[Virginia · Rating 4 out of 5]

He covers an interesting group of topics and most poems really are beautifully descriptive although the topic may be dark.

[George · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not a single poem misses its mark

[Laurie Byro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliant poet, not my fave book of his, but no Edward H book is ever bad. Especially like reading about Strand, and Phil Levine poets I had the pleasure of meeting/interviewing. Good stuff.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

An accessible and moving book. The poems on parenthood are especially noteworthy.

[Shay 24 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finished this collection of poetry last year and loved it. Edward has a fantastic grasp of setting and ambience. Got to meet him and person and get my copy of this signed. Truly the nicest guy

[Maristela · Rating 4 out of 5]

- snippets of memories like that ant crawling across the tile floor with love proceeding by badbadnotgood playing in the background

[joy ferguson]

Love “To My 17 7ear Old Self”

[Sacha · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the Endless Mountains was my favorite of this collection.

Many poems instructing one not to do things. The collection started with poems of losing friends, continued to stories of work including teaching.

[Ace Boggess · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a fast read, beautiful and poignant. Every poem is proof that you can write from pure nostalgia without being sappy or overly sentimental.