Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women

by Jane Hirshfield

"Hirshfield's current collection brings together . . . an astonishing array of women writers from the 22nd century BC poet Enheduanna to Nelly Sachs and Anna Akhmatova." — Library Journal "Destined to become a classic. . . . An anthology of women's spirituality on this scale has never been attempted before and I cannot imagine it being better done." — Andrew Harvey

Genres: Poetry, Spirituality, Religion, Anthologies, Womens, Feminism, Womens Studies

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Jane 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:

Reviews

[Hope Struck · Rating 5 out of 5]

i checked this out from the library.
next, i will buy it.
then, i will roll around on top of this book and rub it all over my face. i will shower in this book for the rest of my stinkin life. that's how much i love this book. fyi.

[AnandaTashie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A combination of spiritual poetry and history of the poets. Really expansive, beautiful, informative collection.

My favorites were:

p 21, Zi Ye
All night I could not sleep / because of the moonlight on my bed. / I kept on hearing a voice calling: / Out of Nowhere, Nothing answered "yes."

p 31, Gnostic Gospel - Nag Hammadi Library
I am the incomprehensible silence / and the memory that will not be forgotten. / I am the voice whose sound is everywhere / and the speech that appears in many forms. / I am the utterance of my own name.

(...) I am the one you have scattered, / and you have gathered me together.

p 58, Izumi Shikibu
I cannot say / which is which: / the glowing / plum blossom is / the spring night's moon.

p 97, Marguerite Porete (? - 1310) (I want to see if I can find more about her; the biography glimpse caught my interest. Wrote Mirror of Simple Souls.)

p 100, Hadewijch Antwerp
In the beginning Love satisfies us. / When Love first spoke to me of love - / How I laughed at her in return! / But then she made me like the hazel trees, / Which blossom early in the season of darkness, / And bear fruit slowly.

p 106, Hadewijch II
All things / are too small / to hold me, / I am so vast

p 133, Mirabai
Love has stained my body / to the color of the One Who Holds Up Mountains.

p 143, Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) (Want to see if I can find more about her too. Though deemed a saint, she was also known for her humanness and sense of humor.)

p 158, Sor Huana Ines de la Cruz
Since today the Child / leaves heaven for earth / and finds nowhere to rest / his head in this world, / who will come to his aid? / Water! / Fire! / Air! / No, but Earth will!

p 169, Bibi Hayati
Is this scorching a lightning bolt's remnants, or the burning / mountain? / The heat of my sighs, or your inner body?

p 172, Emily Dickinson
Who has not found the Heaven - below - / Will fail of it above - / For Angels rent the House next ours, / Wherever we remove -

p 181, Wild Nights - Wild Nights! / Were I with thee / Wild Nights should be / Our luxury!

p, 192, Christina Georgina Rossetti
Tread softly! all earth is holy ground.

p 198, Osage Woman's Initiation Song
I have made a footprint, a sacred one. / I have made a footprint, through it the blades push upward. / (...) I have made a footprint, I live in the light of day.

p 209, Anna Akhmatova
Sunset in the ethereal waves: / I cannot tell if the day / is ending, or the world, or if / the secret of secrets is inside me again.

p 213, Gabriela Mistral
Scatter it in a song, / or in one great love's desire.

p 226, Edith Sodergran
On foot / I had to walk through the solar systems, / before I found the first thread of my red dress. / Already, I sense myself. / Somewhere in space hangs my heart, / sparks fly from it, shaking the air, / to other reckless hearts.

p 230, Now I shall drink wisdom from the spruce's sap-filled crowns, / now I shall drink truth from the withered trunks of the birches, / now I shall drink power from the smallest and tenderest grasses: / a mighty protector mercifully reaches me his hand.

p 232, Marina Tsvetaeva
The wind is level now, the earth is wet with dew, / the storm of stars in the sky will turn to quiet. / And soon all of us will sleep under the earth, we / who never let each other sleep above it.

[Nina · Rating 5 out of 5]

What I loved most about this book is that it is about women who experience spirituality and express it in their poetry. This is not a collection of Christian ideas, although they play an important role in it too. Instead, there are many poems from pre-Christian times, just as from other religions and eras. The common theme, according to the title, is the 'praise of the sacred'. I was not always sure about the meaning of 'sacred', and would have rather preferred 'spirituality', but this isjust a matter of personal preference and does not subtract any from the wonderful read. The book is definitely awesome when you are interested in women's voices, a huge variety of poetry with one common theme. I loved the beauty of the poems and often enough found them rather universal in their meanings and they absolutely touched me.

[Gina Herald · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I was passionate
filled with longing,
I searched
far and wide.

But the day
that the Truthful One
found me,
I was at home."
-Lal Ded

l view this work as women coming home to themselves, and their gifts. I can only hope for so much in this alienating and deeply confused time to be alive. This is a wonderful guidebook to return to for that purpose.

This celebrates turbulence, cycles, gentleness, shameless exuberance, empathy, and many of the human traits that are culturally notated as feminine. Whether or not they are, all things referenced as the feminine are celebrated in a way that it has literally become taboo and uncomfortable to celebrate anymore, though they are in finality human qualities. I think that's a good challenge for anybody.

[Gudrun Mouw · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the broad historical spectrum of poetry by women. My favorite poet in the book was Anna Akhmatova. I'm still thinking of the last 3 lines of a poem written 2 years before her death:

I cannot tell if the day
Is ending, or the world, or if
The secret of secrets is inside me again.


Some of the other work seemed a bit uneven to me.

[Carrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Such a breadth of cultures and time and yet some things never change, as Sumangalamata made very clear in her poem that reads, "At last free, at last I am a woman free! No more tied to the kitchen, stained amid the stained pots, no more bound to the husband who thought me less than the shade he wove with his hands. No more anger, no more hunger, I sit now in the shade of my own tree. Meditating thus, I am happy, I am serene." (6th century B.C.E.) :)

I also loved Edith Sodergran's "Homecoming"- it captured exactly how I feel in returning to certain spots.

[Kira · Rating 4 out of 5]

I keep coming back to Otto Rank’s idea that modern love is a religious problem (in Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: “as we grow increasingly secular and move away from the towns where we were born, we can no longer use religion or community to confirm our meaning in the world, so we seize a love partner instead, someone to distract us from the fact of our animal existence”). And thinking of AP saying she learned abt romantic love in the context of religious love—God as the first entity that loves you completely and whom you love completely.

So with that in mind I guess it’s not exactly surprising that so many of these poems read as ecstatic love letters to god, some of them bordering on erotic. But it is interesting that many of the older poems were written by women who escaped loveless or abusive marriages and went onto live ascetic, wandering, celibate lives. I think I expected these poems to include some self-reflection/rumination on their experiences as women. Nah. It felt like some of them had shifted the focus of the meaning of their lives (as well as some erotic tension) from their husbands to god, but in so doing skipped over themselves. An observation, not a complaint. And advertised, because it’s literally called women IN PRAISE OF THE SACRED. But I struggled to really feel connected to the writers.

[John Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

I discovered a passion for poetry upon reading "Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women". The depth and substance of each poem phenomenal, sacred, and embraced by esoteric value and richness. I also enjoyed discovering ancient, as well as modern female voices who speak (or write), about the mysteries of life, especially that of the soul. One of my favorites was by Lal Ded (Lalla), 14th c. perhaps, p. 120, "I was passionate / filled with longing / I searched / far and wide. / But the day /
that the Truthful One /
found me, / I was at home." This poem spoke volumes referencing the beauty of not only Truth, but the Divine Who resides from within. Beautiful! Exquisite! Phenomenal! Each poem allowed me to become new again, a new creature, within each moment. I began to not only learn of life, but live life upon reading this very well researched anthology.

[ninamo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I want to buy 6000 copies of this book and pass it on to family, friends, colleagues, and strangers.

[Alison Lorenz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lovely, it's moving to read such wisdom in the words of women across the world and living up to thousands of years ago. Yearning, conviction, the fear and joy losing oneself and finding oneself are among the themes echoing beautifully from poem to poem.

[J]

43 centuries of women's thoughts from around the world! What an experience.

[Glenn Berger]

Among many wonderful poems is this one by Pan Zhao (48-117?), the most famous woman scholar of Chinese history, on the slow, incremental process of restoring one's connection to our essential nature, on finding the lost heart.

Tempered, annealed, the hard essence of autumn metals
finely forged, subtle, yet perdurable and straight,

By nature penetrating deep yet advancing by inches
to span all things yet stitch them up together,

Only needle-and-thread's delicate footsteps
are truly broad-ranging yet without beginning!

"Withdrawing elegantly" to mend a loose-thread,
and restore to white silk a lamb's down purity. . .

How can those who count pennies calculate their worth?
They may carve monuments yet lack all understanding.

[Carrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much of the poetry I’ve been reading lately is a hard intellectual chew. This volume is spacious and inspiring, humble, doesn’t work too hard. Jane Hirshfield brings together women from diverse pools of spiritual thought. Some were personally strengthening for me, and others just made me give pause. (One I even ripped out!) Hirshfield makes it easy to go deep—a great introduction to many underrepresented poets.

[Ivan Granger · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the first anthology I got years ago that made me say, Wow! Includes Sappho, Rabia, Yeshe Tsogyel, Hildegard von Bingen, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Hadewijch of Antwerp, Lalla, Mirabai, Bibi Hayati, Marina Tsvetaeva. The best collection I’ve found of women’s voices in sacred poetry.

[Reta · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is an essential collection for anyone who enjoys biography, feminism, poetry, or spirituality. I am a lover of all four, so I give this book 5 stars on crossing genres and gifting me several euphoric and sacred moments through the last month as I read for the following reasons:

1) The Timeline
This collection spans 43 centuries, giving the topic a breadth that excites me. To see the thoughts and souls of women shamans, nuns, royalty, etc. throughout the years is rare. We are often presented with the diaries and musings of men throughout the years, and it’s about time we uncovered and spent more time with the female spiritual experience.

2) The Diversity
Included in this collection are voices from multiple religions, walks of life, countries, and people groups. Being able to see the similarities and differences in the spiritual experiences and hear the passion and intimacy of their conversations put me in my element.

3) The Biographies
Hirshfield does a beautiful job of pointing out similarities and contrasts in the women’s voices and lives. The biographies are very brief, but that brevity keeps the voices and writings of the women front and center - like being offered several deliciously layered bites of various dishes, knowing that at any point you can pause and choose to savor just one.

Some of my favorite female mystics and spiritualists presented in this volume include:

1. Sor Juana Inés de La Cruz (I wrote my senior literary thesis on her in college.)
2. Rabi’a (I opened the book to her voice when I was contemplating buying it, and her words resonated with my spiritual experience.)
3. Hildegard of Bingen (I was a child when I first read a short biography of her, and her visions and life stayed powerfully in my head throughout the years.)
4. Chiyō-ni (Her haikus are so deep and opened so many doors of thought, I couldn’t believe they were only 3 lines.)
5. Christina Rossetti (I memorized her poems for school recitations several times as a child, but I’d never been connected with her spiritually work - deeply gratifying.)

Also among my favorites were several poetesses who were unknown or unnamed from tribes and long-held traditions that spoke of the divinity to be found in nature and a sacred intimate connection with the divine.

[Zach]

This is a phenomenal collection with an incredible array of voices and perspectives. Hirshfield's introductions to each author provide a powerful and unique lens into women's history. The poems themselves are a bounty of lightning, love, sorrow, pain, transcendence, and much more. Though patriarchy has long tried to dominate the sacred realm, the goddess and the diamonds contained within are indeed eternal, and Hirshfield ensures many more have access to these gems.

I have dozens of favorites within this book, but here are a few.

Everything is plundered, betrayed, sold,
Death's great black wing scrapes the air,
Misery gnaws to the bone.
Why then do we not despair?

By day, from the surrounding woods,
cherries blow summer into town;
at night the deep transparent skies
glitter with new galaxies.

And the miraculous comes so close
to the ruined, dirty house -
something not known to anyone at all,
but wild in our breast for centuries.

by Anna Akhmatova

-

The treasure at the heart of the rose
is your own heart's treasure.
Scatter it as the rose does:
your pain becomes hers to measure

Scatter it in a song,
or in one great love's desire.
Do not resist the rose
lest you burn in its fire.

by Gabriela Mistral

-

Rushing at times
like flames through our bodies --
as if they were still woven with the beginning
of the stars.

How slowly we flash up in clarity--

Oh, after how many lightyears have our hands
folded in supplication--
our knees bent--
and our souls opened
in thanks?

by Nelly Sachs

-

Who has not found the Heaven - below -
Will fail of it above --
For Angels rent the House next ours,
Wherever we remove --

by Emily Dickinson

[Lanette Sweeney · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautiful collection of women's poetry about the holy and the sacred, beginning with Queen Makeda in ancient Ethiopia, who adopted the one-god philosophy and helped establish the line of Israelites there after losing her virginity to King Solomon. Each poet's work is preceded by a brief biography of the woman, her influences and possible interpretations of her meaning. Reading Hirshfield's artful descriptions of these extraordinary women and her explications of their (often previously unknown) poems is often as moving as reading the poems themselves,; each one greatly illuminates our understanding of the poetry and where these women fit in the alternate histories we may have been told. This is an excellent addition to our canon of women's work through the centuries and is probably not meant to be read straight through but rather dipped in for fortification at your leisure. This is a book to own and I'm glad to have it on my shelves.

[Mandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading selections from women throughout history who have been so inspired by the divine. Each one contains some history about the woman herself and some of her poetry or writings. Having been brought up in a fairly straightforward Christian church, it's really helpful for me to see examples of how women throughout time have directly experienced and expressed their interpretation of divinity and love, dating from the earliest written records of our human history to more recent works. I recently lent my copy to a friend but am looking forward to buying another just so ensure I have this as a reference for my own life and coaching.

[Christina Isobel · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an extraordinary book edited by Jane Hirshfield with many poems translated by her. The subtitle is "43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women." 43 centuries! And poems from women all over the world. A perfect book for these times. Many of these women have had very difficult lives or lived in times as difficult or more difficult than ours right now. They have gone inward and often outward to find their deep voices and the voices coming from a woman's perspective. I have gained much solace and joy from this book. I have much gratitude to Hirshfield for creating this book.

[Mallory Everhart · Rating 5 out of 5]

"What the soul does for the body, the poet does for her people." - Gabriela Mistral

Immense gratitude to Jane Hirschfield for compiling, editing, and contextualizing this deeply sacred volume of women's spiritual poetry. She includes a wide variety of women hailing from around the world and works to set them in their own particularity while also drawing interesting comparisons in topic and theme among them. Profoundly illuminating.

[Chloe Shaw · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Everything is plundered, betrayed, sold,
Death’s great black wing scrapes the air,
Misery gnaws to the bone.
Why then do we not despair?

By day, from surrounding woods,
Cherries blow summer into town;
At night the deep transparent skies
Glitter with new galaxies.

And the miraculous comes so close
To the ruined, dirty houses—
Something not known to anyone at all,
But wild in our breast for centuries.”

-Anna Akhmatova (1921)

[Luna Miguel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Uf, cuánto he aprendido. Ha sido una sorpresa este recorrido, que empieza con figuras como Enheduanna, Safo o Tzu Yeh y termina con Gabriela Mistral, Hilda Doolittle o Marina Tsviétaieva. Qué desconocimiento tengo de la poesía oriental. Qué ganas de empezar a remediarlo.

[Andy Zhang]

it is a great collection. however there is one poet named zhou xuanjing, supposedly wang chuyi's mother, who I didn't find any information in chinese. I think it was a poem by someone else, appropriated wrongly in one of the sources hirshfield listed.

[Yvonne Flint · Rating 5 out of 5]

From earliest written records and encompassing many cultures, these deep, wise women spoke my heart.

[Phyllis Fredericksen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A compilation of poetry written by women over the centuries. A brief summary of each author’s life preceded her poetry. Very well done. I used this as a meditation each day and enjoyed it.

[Eileen · Rating 5 out of 5]

© 1994. Includes a mini biography of each author. These poems were inspiring, gripping, glorious, sublime, some causing tears, others lifting the heart. A real treasure.

[Fred Dameron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful collection of women's poetry.

[Braeden Udy · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a wonderful collection of poems!

[Lubna Ferdousy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Filled in my head and my heart. Will surely come back to it from time to time.

[Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars for the poetry. 4 stars for the history. Broadening!