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The Living Fire
A rich and significant collection of more than one hundred poems, drawn from a lifetime of “wild gratitude” in poetry.
In poems chronicling insomnia (“the blue-rimmed edge / of outer dark, those crossroads / where we meet the dead”), art and culture (poems on Edward Hopper and Paul Celan, love poems in the voices of Baudelaire and Gertrude Stein, a meditation on two suitcases of children’s drawings that came out of the Terezin concentration camp), and his own experience, including the powerful, frank self-examinations in his more recent work, Edward Hirsch displays stunning range and quality. Repeatedly confronting the darkness, his own sense of godlessness (“Forgive me, faith, for never having any”), he also struggles with the unlikely presence of the divine, the power of art to redeem human transience, and the complexity of relationships. Throughout the collection, his own life trajectory enriches the poems; he is the “skinny, long-beaked boy / who perched in the branches of the old branch library,” as well as the passionate middle-aged man who tells his lover, “I wish I could paint you— / . . . / I need a brush for your hard angles / and ferocious blues and reds. / . . . / I wish I could paint you / from the waist down.”
Grieving for the losses occasioned by our mortality, Hirsch’s ultimate impulse as a poet is to praise—to wreathe himself, as he writes, in “the living fire” that burns with a ferocious intensity.
In poems chronicling insomnia (“the blue-rimmed edge / of outer dark, those crossroads / where we meet the dead”), art and culture (poems on Edward Hopper and Paul Celan, love poems in the voices of Baudelaire and Gertrude Stein, a meditation on two suitcases of children’s drawings that came out of the Terezin concentration camp), and his own experience, including the powerful, frank self-examinations in his more recent work, Edward Hirsch displays stunning range and quality. Repeatedly confronting the darkness, his own sense of godlessness (“Forgive me, faith, for never having any”), he also struggles with the unlikely presence of the divine, the power of art to redeem human transience, and the complexity of relationships. Throughout the collection, his own life trajectory enriches the poems; he is the “skinny, long-beaked boy / who perched in the branches of the old branch library,” as well as the passionate middle-aged man who tells his lover, “I wish I could paint you— / . . . / I need a brush for your hard angles / and ferocious blues and reds. / . . . / I wish I could paint you / from the waist down.”
Grieving for the losses occasioned by our mortality, Hirsch’s ultimate impulse as a poet is to praise—to wreathe himself, as he writes, in “the living fire” that burns with a ferocious intensity.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published March 1, 2010
22 people are currently reading
338 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.
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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April 18, 2025
Edward Hirsch has long taught that ‘poetry is a form of necessary speech,’ a sort of pure expression in conversation with the reader that, amidst all the static of the world, occurs ‘when someone wants to say something that they hope will have a lasting life.’ As Ezra Pound once said, when it comes to poetry ‘only emotion endures’ and in the work of Edward Hirsch we find emotion clinging to each poem like a liferaft against the destructive waves of time in the great sea of life. The aptly named selected works, The Living Fire, burns with an intensity of life, love, grief, and more to warm our hearts against the coldness of the world. Other times it is ‘a life buoy in bruised waters,’ to sooth our pains and make us feel less alone. ‘Poetry tries to take a stand against time,’ says Hirsch, who’s number of books about poetry are as numerous as his works of poetry, ‘it speaks against our vanishing, it speaks on behalf of our living, it takes sides,’ and through his work he shows us the tenderness of language that can have transformative or transcendental power.‘I lived between my heart and my head,’ he writes in Self-Portrait, ‘like a married couple who can’t get along’ which perfectly captures the way his accessible yet engaging style strikes a blissful balance between cerebral or academic insight and heartfelt, emotional outpourings wrapped in pristine packages of prose. Containing a selection of Hirsch’s poetry across a span of 30 years, The Living Fire is an extraordinary book that is a great testament to Hirsch’s artistic endeavours.
I Am Going to Start Living Like a Mystic
Today I am pulling on a green wool sweater
and walking across the park in a dusky snowfall.
The trees stand like twenty-seven prophets in a field,
each a station in a pilgrimage—silent, pondering.
Blue flakes of light falling across their bodies
are the ciphers of a secret, an occultation.
I will examine their leaves as pages in a text
and consider the bookish pigeons, students of winter.
I will kneel on the track of a vanquished squirrel
and stare into a blank pond for the figure of Sophia.
I shall begin scouring the sky for signs
as if my whole future were constellated upon it.
I will walk home alone with the deep alone,
a disciple of shadows, in praise of the mysteries.
Hirsch is a poet where I often find I enjoy reading him talk about poetry as much as I enjoy reading his poems. His books such as Poet's Choice or A Poet's Glossary—where I first discovered the tale of the Angry Penguins movement and their wild downfall that lives rent free in my head every day—are valued fixtures on my desk at all times and Hirsch has often guided me to poets and deeper understandings of poetry. His love for the art really shines through and it illuminates the ways the world is a sort of living poem or that poetry is all around us, we just need to seek it. Take, for instance, his poem The Case Against Poetry:
While you made the case against poetry—
Plato’s critique of the irrational,
Homeric lying, deluded citizens—
to a group of poets in Prague
night deepened in old windows,
swallows gathered on a narrow ledge
and called to the vanishing twilight,
and a beggar began to sing in the street.
Poetry is everywhere, we just have to unlock it. ‘I try to speak the language of / the unconscious and study earth for secrets’ as he writes in Green Couch, and in this way I find that his poems often have a spiritual sense to them and aim for transcendence. This collection covers a variety of subjects and is a perfect place to start with Hirsch. Unfortunately it does not contain Gabriel: A Poem—a 70pg book-length poem the New Yorker called a ‘masterpiece of sorrow’—yet we still find masterpieces of sorrow and grief, but also joy and hope on every page. From highly introspective poems, examinations on art or ekphrastic poems on works by Edward Hopper and Paul Celan, musings on mortality and more, Hirsch often pairs the mundane with the extraordinary and raises all moments of life to emotional heights. He looks at how life ‘hurts us,’ and we find moments of agony where ‘it / isn’t what we’d imagined’ yet he reminds us to keep hope and champion the human spirit where ‘we manage, we survive.’ It makes for a rather empowering read.
I want to live like that little fig tree
that sprouted up at the beach last spring
and spread its leaves over the sand rock
—from Green Figs
Jhumpa Lahiri once remarked about Hirsch that his poetry reminds us ‘to be intimate but restrained, to be tender without being sentimental, to witness life without flinching, and above all, to isolate and preserve those details of our existence so often overlooked, so easily forgotten, so essential to our souls.’ This succinctly captures the essence of his work. I love his creativity, such as his series of The Hades Sonnets with ‘self portraits’ as figures like Eurydice, Hades, and Persephone who finds they have ‘married myself to a cycle / that was demonic, treacherous, immortal.’ Or there are The Lectures on Love, where we are ‘attending this conversation on love,’ with Hirsch writing as Margaret Fuller, Marina Tsvetaeva, Gertrude Stein (‘love happens to be an astonishing state / a state in which all of us are astonished’), and more on the ‘the strange, enlightening subject of love,’ as Hirsch has Denis Diderot speak. Love ‘creates it own universe of discourse, / which is the least susceptible to reason,’ yet love is often the reason for keeping our chin up and hopes lit in our hearts. I also just love the way he makes the natural world into a poem at every turn, such as in his poem Fall which ends as such:
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.
Hirsch can be wonderfully introspective as well. This is particularly so when it comes to memories that ‘come back to me now, delicious love / the times my sad heart knew a little sweetness’ such as in Branch Library reflecting on his part self, a ‘skinny, long-beaked boy / who perched in the branches of the old branch library.’ It is quite lovely.
‘A poem, as a manifestation of language and thus essentially dialogue, can be a message in a bottle, sent out in the—not always greatly hopeful—belief that somewhere and sometime it could wash up on land, on heartland perhaps. Poems in this sense, too, are under way: they are making toward something.’
—From How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry
The poem ‘may seek the divine but it does so through the medium of a certain kind of human interaction,’ Hirsch writes in his essay In the Begginning is the Relation, , a gorgeous piece on how ‘poetry is a voicing, a calling forth,’ a sort of message in a bottle that ‘has been (silently) en route’ and ‘reading poetry is an act of reciprocity,’ that enables human interaction across time and space through which we ‘understand the relationship between the poet, the poem, and the reader not as a static entity but as a dynamic unfolding. An emerging sacramental event.’ It’s quite a beautiful sentiment:
The sense of spirituality is alive in his works and I quite love his focus on the relationship between author, text, and reader and the way he makes it a sort of love story, such as in his poem Dead Sea Scrolls:
I was like the words
on a papyrus apocryphon
buried in a cave at Qumran,
and you were the scholar
I had been waiting for
all my life, the one reader
who unravelled the scrolls
and understood the language
and deciphered its mysteries.
I love the way he seeks to use language as a way not only to uncover truths or uncover our hearts, but to bear them boldly to one another as a form of communication and communion.
Forebodings
These ravens gathering on the beach
in the battered blue light of dusk
are a sudden unkindness
The path heading up to the house
strays off into a vague straggle
like a thought that has gone too far
That sliver peering through the clouds
looks like a bell that can no longer ring
in an abandoned church steeple
I don’t mind the mindless fog
but my room at the top of the stairs
tilts like a broken boat at sea
All night I feel the homesick waves
and hear ravens scavenging in my sleep
Collecting three decades worth of work, The Living Fire is an extraordinary collection of poetry and a testament to the lovely mind of Edward Hirsch. A rather short selected volume that makes every page count, this is a great read and one I love to return to often.
4/5
What the Last Evening Will Be Like
You’re sitting at a small bay window
in an empty café by the sea.
It’s nightfall, and the owner is locking up,
though you’re still hunched over the radiator,
which is slowly losing warmth.
Now you’re walking down to the shore
to watch the last blues fading on the waves.
You’ve lived in small houses, tight spaces—
the walls around you kept closing in—
but the sea and the sky were also yours.
No one else is around to drink with you
from the watery fog, shadowy depths.
You’re alone with the whirling cosmos.
Goodbye, love, far away, in a warm place.
Night is endless here, silence infinite.
I Am Going to Start Living Like a Mystic
Today I am pulling on a green wool sweater
and walking across the park in a dusky snowfall.
The trees stand like twenty-seven prophets in a field,
each a station in a pilgrimage—silent, pondering.
Blue flakes of light falling across their bodies
are the ciphers of a secret, an occultation.
I will examine their leaves as pages in a text
and consider the bookish pigeons, students of winter.
I will kneel on the track of a vanquished squirrel
and stare into a blank pond for the figure of Sophia.
I shall begin scouring the sky for signs
as if my whole future were constellated upon it.
I will walk home alone with the deep alone,
a disciple of shadows, in praise of the mysteries.
Hirsch is a poet where I often find I enjoy reading him talk about poetry as much as I enjoy reading his poems. His books such as Poet's Choice or A Poet's Glossary—where I first discovered the tale of the Angry Penguins movement and their wild downfall that lives rent free in my head every day—are valued fixtures on my desk at all times and Hirsch has often guided me to poets and deeper understandings of poetry. His love for the art really shines through and it illuminates the ways the world is a sort of living poem or that poetry is all around us, we just need to seek it. Take, for instance, his poem The Case Against Poetry:
While you made the case against poetry—
Plato’s critique of the irrational,
Homeric lying, deluded citizens—
to a group of poets in Prague
night deepened in old windows,
swallows gathered on a narrow ledge
and called to the vanishing twilight,
and a beggar began to sing in the street.
Poetry is everywhere, we just have to unlock it. ‘I try to speak the language of / the unconscious and study earth for secrets’ as he writes in Green Couch, and in this way I find that his poems often have a spiritual sense to them and aim for transcendence. This collection covers a variety of subjects and is a perfect place to start with Hirsch. Unfortunately it does not contain Gabriel: A Poem—a 70pg book-length poem the New Yorker called a ‘masterpiece of sorrow’—yet we still find masterpieces of sorrow and grief, but also joy and hope on every page. From highly introspective poems, examinations on art or ekphrastic poems on works by Edward Hopper and Paul Celan, musings on mortality and more, Hirsch often pairs the mundane with the extraordinary and raises all moments of life to emotional heights. He looks at how life ‘hurts us,’ and we find moments of agony where ‘it / isn’t what we’d imagined’ yet he reminds us to keep hope and champion the human spirit where ‘we manage, we survive.’ It makes for a rather empowering read.
I want to live like that little fig tree
that sprouted up at the beach last spring
and spread its leaves over the sand rock
—from Green Figs
Jhumpa Lahiri once remarked about Hirsch that his poetry reminds us ‘to be intimate but restrained, to be tender without being sentimental, to witness life without flinching, and above all, to isolate and preserve those details of our existence so often overlooked, so easily forgotten, so essential to our souls.’ This succinctly captures the essence of his work. I love his creativity, such as his series of The Hades Sonnets with ‘self portraits’ as figures like Eurydice, Hades, and Persephone who finds they have ‘married myself to a cycle / that was demonic, treacherous, immortal.’ Or there are The Lectures on Love, where we are ‘attending this conversation on love,’ with Hirsch writing as Margaret Fuller, Marina Tsvetaeva, Gertrude Stein (‘love happens to be an astonishing state / a state in which all of us are astonished’), and more on the ‘the strange, enlightening subject of love,’ as Hirsch has Denis Diderot speak. Love ‘creates it own universe of discourse, / which is the least susceptible to reason,’ yet love is often the reason for keeping our chin up and hopes lit in our hearts. I also just love the way he makes the natural world into a poem at every turn, such as in his poem Fall which ends as such:
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.
Hirsch can be wonderfully introspective as well. This is particularly so when it comes to memories that ‘come back to me now, delicious love / the times my sad heart knew a little sweetness’ such as in Branch Library reflecting on his part self, a ‘skinny, long-beaked boy / who perched in the branches of the old branch library.’ It is quite lovely.
‘A poem, as a manifestation of language and thus essentially dialogue, can be a message in a bottle, sent out in the—not always greatly hopeful—belief that somewhere and sometime it could wash up on land, on heartland perhaps. Poems in this sense, too, are under way: they are making toward something.’
—From How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry
The poem ‘may seek the divine but it does so through the medium of a certain kind of human interaction,’ Hirsch writes in his essay In the Begginning is the Relation, , a gorgeous piece on how ‘poetry is a voicing, a calling forth,’ a sort of message in a bottle that ‘has been (silently) en route’ and ‘reading poetry is an act of reciprocity,’ that enables human interaction across time and space through which we ‘understand the relationship between the poet, the poem, and the reader not as a static entity but as a dynamic unfolding. An emerging sacramental event.’ It’s quite a beautiful sentiment:
‘The relationship between writer and reader is by definition removed and mediated through a text, a body of words. It is a particular kind of exchange between two people not physically present to each other…an immediate, intense, and unsettling form of literary discourse. Reading poetry is a way of connecting—through the medium of language—more deeply with yourself even as you connect more deeply with another. The poem delivers on our spiritual lives precisely because it simultaneously gives us the gift of intimacy and interiority, privacy and participation.’
The sense of spirituality is alive in his works and I quite love his focus on the relationship between author, text, and reader and the way he makes it a sort of love story, such as in his poem Dead Sea Scrolls:
I was like the words
on a papyrus apocryphon
buried in a cave at Qumran,
and you were the scholar
I had been waiting for
all my life, the one reader
who unravelled the scrolls
and understood the language
and deciphered its mysteries.
I love the way he seeks to use language as a way not only to uncover truths or uncover our hearts, but to bear them boldly to one another as a form of communication and communion.
Forebodings
These ravens gathering on the beach
in the battered blue light of dusk
are a sudden unkindness
The path heading up to the house
strays off into a vague straggle
like a thought that has gone too far
That sliver peering through the clouds
looks like a bell that can no longer ring
in an abandoned church steeple
I don’t mind the mindless fog
but my room at the top of the stairs
tilts like a broken boat at sea
All night I feel the homesick waves
and hear ravens scavenging in my sleep
Collecting three decades worth of work, The Living Fire is an extraordinary collection of poetry and a testament to the lovely mind of Edward Hirsch. A rather short selected volume that makes every page count, this is a great read and one I love to return to often.
4/5
What the Last Evening Will Be Like
You’re sitting at a small bay window
in an empty café by the sea.
It’s nightfall, and the owner is locking up,
though you’re still hunched over the radiator,
which is slowly losing warmth.
Now you’re walking down to the shore
to watch the last blues fading on the waves.
You’ve lived in small houses, tight spaces—
the walls around you kept closing in—
but the sea and the sky were also yours.
No one else is around to drink with you
from the watery fog, shadowy depths.
You’re alone with the whirling cosmos.
Goodbye, love, far away, in a warm place.
Night is endless here, silence infinite.
April 30, 2020
I’m so grateful for this book, it has restored my faith in poetry :)
I uses to love to read and write poetry as a teenager but somehow stopped... often finding modern poetry, both Dutch and English-language, self-indulgent or just undecipherable (or both), and I guess both the reading and writing of poetry had started to feel too self-absorbed as well.
But these lines restored my faith, from Earthly Light, Homage to the Seventeenth-Century Dutch painters:
‘If painting is to be a form of prayer
(prayer which Weil called “unmixed attention”
and George Herbert “something understood”,)’
And this is what Hirsch has brought back into my life: reading poetry as praying, reading poetry with unmixed attention, reading poetry while listening to the wind rustling the leaves, and feeling both the heartbreak of life and a deep calm settling in.
I uses to love to read and write poetry as a teenager but somehow stopped... often finding modern poetry, both Dutch and English-language, self-indulgent or just undecipherable (or both), and I guess both the reading and writing of poetry had started to feel too self-absorbed as well.
But these lines restored my faith, from Earthly Light, Homage to the Seventeenth-Century Dutch painters:
‘If painting is to be a form of prayer
(prayer which Weil called “unmixed attention”
and George Herbert “something understood”,)’
And this is what Hirsch has brought back into my life: reading poetry as praying, reading poetry with unmixed attention, reading poetry while listening to the wind rustling the leaves, and feeling both the heartbreak of life and a deep calm settling in.
March 19, 2012
After reading and enjoying many of this poet's earlier books, I picked up this one -- a "new and collected" gathering. The best of his earlier poems are here, and the new poems are arresting and moving. This is not a poet who hides his feelings in overjazzed language, nor cloaks his ideas in obscurity as many contemporary poets do. Instead he has the courage of his craft, which makes his work accessible and moving.
If you never read poetry because you don't know where to start, Hirsch will put you on the right road.
If you never read poetry because you don't know where to start, Hirsch will put you on the right road.
November 28, 2013
Inspiring
A great collection from a fabulous poet. This New and Selected includes poems dating from 1981 (For the Sleepwalkers) to shortly before its publication in 2010. There is a great variety of tone and form and subject matter here, really something for everyone.
At the front there are some new poems, not printed in any other collection.
Here are a few lines from "Forebodings":
I don't mind the mindless fog
but my room at the top of the stairs
tilts like a broken boat at sea
All night I feel the homesick waves
and hear ravens scavenging in my sleep
A great collection from a fabulous poet. This New and Selected includes poems dating from 1981 (For the Sleepwalkers) to shortly before its publication in 2010. There is a great variety of tone and form and subject matter here, really something for everyone.
At the front there are some new poems, not printed in any other collection.
Here are a few lines from "Forebodings":
I don't mind the mindless fog
but my room at the top of the stairs
tilts like a broken boat at sea
All night I feel the homesick waves
and hear ravens scavenging in my sleep
August 28, 2015
Just when I thought the poems couldn't get any better--line breaks that made me go oh!; cadences that made me go ah!; diction and imagery and conceits that made me say yes! yes! yes!-- Hirsch goes into form poems and blows me the frig away. The Living Fire is a compilation of perhaps his greatest hits from previous collections. Now I want to read the rest of those collections, having read only one before.
May 20, 2010
This is the first volume of Hirsch's that I've read. He has an interesting way of writing that I think is quite distinct; while some of his poems are reminiscent of Mary Oliver or other nature poets, he adds a certain element of sensuality or sadness to them. There's quite a bit of nostalgia, memory, insomnia, and solemnity in his poems.
July 27, 2025
un caz dubios în care scrierea devine din ce în ce mai slabă pe măsură ce timpul trece
February 23, 2023
Citită în trenul București-Piatra Neamț, se putea și mai bine.
January 28, 2016
There is no better poet in my view writing today, and one of the least affected or arrogant poets I have ever met. Instantly, once a poet achieves the acclaim or "muscle" that Hirsch has achieved, they act like they are the new "men or women" of letters. Yet, for ME, Merwin among others, are "poet's poets" but not as well received for non poetry readers. Levine was more of a Walt Whitman, a poet of the "street" and Hirsch echoes that but for ME with more of an eloquence at times, but with that wry almost self deprecating sense of humour. I just announced on facebook why I love this man. I include that below and an example of Hirsch being Hirsch at his best.
ANY or many of us could have written these emotions, and with humor, but perhaps not with his grace. palidrome is I love me, vol l. Why I just thought of this, I dunno, but I wanted to share why I love Edward Hirsch. He was very generous to us at our seminar in Paterson. a fine teacher, a good guy. I had been stupid in a remark: his face is that open, he is that open. I apologized, he said no need. I don't know him that well, but for me he is the real deal, the kind of human I aspire to be and the kind of writer I shall never be. One of the reasons why is this poem, from his collected: dig it:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/...
there are so many of these sort of poems, he is blessed with the gift of the pen, and we as readers are blessed because of his sharing our world.
Laurie Byro
ANY or many of us could have written these emotions, and with humor, but perhaps not with his grace. palidrome is I love me, vol l. Why I just thought of this, I dunno, but I wanted to share why I love Edward Hirsch. He was very generous to us at our seminar in Paterson. a fine teacher, a good guy. I had been stupid in a remark: his face is that open, he is that open. I apologized, he said no need. I don't know him that well, but for me he is the real deal, the kind of human I aspire to be and the kind of writer I shall never be. One of the reasons why is this poem, from his collected: dig it:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/...
there are so many of these sort of poems, he is blessed with the gift of the pen, and we as readers are blessed because of his sharing our world.
Laurie Byro
December 30, 2022
Cum să revii în Chester
Mi-amintesc luna unsuroasă plutind
ca un cauciuc de mașină deasupra autostrăzii, ultimele
stele împestrițau cerul precum nisipul pe geamul
de la garajul tatălui meu. Ani de-a rândul m-am ferit
de câmpiile de beton ale unei copilării
jalnice, pâcla umedă a vieții din Chester,
dar acum m-am întors să urmăresc
luna printre șirurile dințoase de hornuri,
printre străduțele din spatele caselor luminate de
felinare galbene și murdare. Am sosit aici pentru a sta
ca un pelerin în fața barăcilor din tablă
ce-și întind urechile de tablă spre autostradă
în timp ce camioanele vuiesc și trec pe-alături fără a opri
iar fabricile își pocnesc limbile grase una
de alta-n vânt. Am venit aici s-ascult
străini care vorbesc despre fotbal, chelnerițe
care vorbesc despre străini. Am venit aici să văd
cum primesc curentul profund al unui furnal bătrân.
Nu s-au schimbat prea multe aici, și totuși
nu i-au rămas nici prea multe copilăriei.
De vrei să revii la Chester,
trebuie s-asculți; trebuie să stai
penitent în picioarele goale
și să simți cum se-ntunecă aerul înaintea furtunii;
trebuie să privești îndelung spre singura plantă
cățărătoare unduindu-se pe veranda familiei
până ce simți cum palma aspră a tatălui tău
îți cuprinde mâna, până deguști în cele din urmă
cuvintele din adâncul propriei guri, spunând
Nu te-ntoarce, fiule. Și bine-ai venit.
(pp. 36-37)
Cădere
Cădere, căzând, căzut. Cam așa-și schimbă
Anotimpul timpurile în arțarii pletoși
Ce punctează linia drumului; frunzele vânoase în formă de palmă
Se înroșesc pe crengile lor (într-o competiție înfocată cu
Ultimele păsări cardinal) și apoi
Încep să alunece sfioase și plutesc în aer, în final
Așternându-se în straturi colorate ce-mbracă pământul ca un covor.
La asfințit, și lumina cade în straturi pe copaci
Într-un anotimp al congruențelor stranii, crepusculare – o tangara
stacojie
Și mireasma frunzelor arse, un golden retriever
Aleargă săltând pe mijlocul unei străzi late, iar soarele
Apune departe, în spatele unor copaci scufundați în fum,
O fereastră se deschide în vârful lor și un nor zdrențuit
Umple nevinovat spațiul cu nuanțe purpurii. Totul
Se schimbă și se mișcă în secunda împărțită între trecutul
Tot mai vast al verii și revenirea dură a iernii, o clipă
Pleacă din stație după program,
O alta sosește la peronul următor. Totul
Merge aproape ceas: frunzele plutesc în derivă
Căzute de pe crengi și ni se adună încet la picioare,
Alunecându-ne peste glezne, iar anotimpul începe mișcându-se
În jurul nostru chiar când vremea lui plină de culoare ne mișcă pe noi,
Chiar când ne trage în buzunarele lui prăfuite, luminate de amurg.
Și-n fiecare an există o clipă repede, uimitoare
Când ne oprim în mijlocul unui lung drum spre casă și
Dintr-odată simțim ceva invizibil și lipsit de greutate
Cum ne atinge umerii, alunecând prin aer:
E vântul autumnal apăsându-ne trupul;
E lumina schimbătoare a căderii de frunze ce cade peste noi.
(pp. 53-54)
Edward Hopper și
Casă lângă calea ferată (1925)
Aici, chiar în miezul zilei,
Casa asta stranie, mătăhăloasă are expresia
Cuiva la care te holbezi, a cuiva care-şi ţine
Respiraţia sub apă, tăcut, în aşteptare;
Casei îi e ruşine cu sine, ruşine
Cu acoperişul ei fantastic, mansardat
Şi cu veranda ei pseudo-gotică, ruşine
Cu umerii şi mâinile ei mari, neîndemânatice.
Dar bărbatul din spatele şevaletului e neîndurător;
E brutal ca lumina soarelui şi crede
Că această casă trebuie să le fi făcut ceva oribil
Oamenilor care au trăit odinioară aici
Pentru că acum e atât de disperat de goală,
Trebuie să-i fi făcut ceva şi cerului
Pentru că şi cerul e cu totul părăsit
Şi golit de sens. Nu sunt
Copaci sau tufişuri nicăieri — casa
Trebuie să fi făcut ceva rău şi pământului.
Tot ce există e o pereche de şine
Îndreptându-se undeva în depărtare. Nu trece nici un tren.
Acum străinul se întoarce zilnic în acest loc
Până ce casa începe să suspecteze că
Omul e şi el nenorocit, nenorocit
Şi chiar ruşinat. În curând casa începe
Să-l privească pe om cu onestitate. Şi cumva
Pânza albă, goală capătă încet
Expresia cuiva lipsit de viaţă,
A cuiva ce-şi ţine respiraţia sub apă.
Şi apoi, într-o zi, omul pur şi simplu dispare.
E doar o ultimă umbră a unei după-amiezi mişcându-se
Peste şine, străbătând
Câmpia întinsă, în amurg.
Bărbatul acesta va picta alte vile părăsite,
Şi geamuri ofilite de cafenele, şi magazine
De provincie cu reclame şterse.
Întotdeauna ele vor avea aceeaşi expresie,
Privirea cu totul goală a cuiva
Care se ştie privit, a unui american mătăhălos,
A cuiva care e pe cale să fie abandonat
Iarăşi, dar de data asta nu mai suportă.
(pp. 59-60)
Vară americană
Fiecare zi era un ceasornic ce-abia se mișca,
un pumn care ne lovea lent înainte și-napoi,
căldura electrică mocnea în aerul purpuriu,
însă fiecare noapte era o falnică minge albă
zburând la mijlocul terenului – „conservă de porumb“ și coborând
printre stelele ce străluceau deasupra diamantului.
Fiecare zi era pereche grea de mănuși din pânză
împingând tomberoane de gunoi într-o gură omnivoră
ce se strecura printre magistrale și alei,
dar fiecare noapte era ca o bâtă
ce prindea viață în mâinile tale, era
prima aruncare bună de un punct.
În acea vară am învățat să trișez la baza a doua
sărind pe rândul aruncătorilor dreptaci
și apoi țâșnind cu capul înainte spre sacul cu nisip.
Am învățat să folosesc schimbătorul de viteze al mașinii tatălui meu
și să parchez cu prietena mea pe plajă,
cu farurile aruncând lumină, apoi stingându-se încet.
Eram un puști de șaisprezece ani din suburbii,
iar fiecare zi era încă o lecție de muncă,
un curs despre cum să devin invizibil pentru ceilalți,
însă fiecare noapte era un Walt Whitman al vacanțelor,
sunetul limpede al unui fluier la ora 5 după-amiaza,
libertatea de a păși afară, în aer liber.
(pp. 143-144)
Mi-amintesc luna unsuroasă plutind
ca un cauciuc de mașină deasupra autostrăzii, ultimele
stele împestrițau cerul precum nisipul pe geamul
de la garajul tatălui meu. Ani de-a rândul m-am ferit
de câmpiile de beton ale unei copilării
jalnice, pâcla umedă a vieții din Chester,
dar acum m-am întors să urmăresc
luna printre șirurile dințoase de hornuri,
printre străduțele din spatele caselor luminate de
felinare galbene și murdare. Am sosit aici pentru a sta
ca un pelerin în fața barăcilor din tablă
ce-și întind urechile de tablă spre autostradă
în timp ce camioanele vuiesc și trec pe-alături fără a opri
iar fabricile își pocnesc limbile grase una
de alta-n vânt. Am venit aici s-ascult
străini care vorbesc despre fotbal, chelnerițe
care vorbesc despre străini. Am venit aici să văd
cum primesc curentul profund al unui furnal bătrân.
Nu s-au schimbat prea multe aici, și totuși
nu i-au rămas nici prea multe copilăriei.
De vrei să revii la Chester,
trebuie s-asculți; trebuie să stai
penitent în picioarele goale
și să simți cum se-ntunecă aerul înaintea furtunii;
trebuie să privești îndelung spre singura plantă
cățărătoare unduindu-se pe veranda familiei
până ce simți cum palma aspră a tatălui tău
îți cuprinde mâna, până deguști în cele din urmă
cuvintele din adâncul propriei guri, spunând
Nu te-ntoarce, fiule. Și bine-ai venit.
(pp. 36-37)
Cădere
Cădere, căzând, căzut. Cam așa-și schimbă
Anotimpul timpurile în arțarii pletoși
Ce punctează linia drumului; frunzele vânoase în formă de palmă
Se înroșesc pe crengile lor (într-o competiție înfocată cu
Ultimele păsări cardinal) și apoi
Încep să alunece sfioase și plutesc în aer, în final
Așternându-se în straturi colorate ce-mbracă pământul ca un covor.
La asfințit, și lumina cade în straturi pe copaci
Într-un anotimp al congruențelor stranii, crepusculare – o tangara
stacojie
Și mireasma frunzelor arse, un golden retriever
Aleargă săltând pe mijlocul unei străzi late, iar soarele
Apune departe, în spatele unor copaci scufundați în fum,
O fereastră se deschide în vârful lor și un nor zdrențuit
Umple nevinovat spațiul cu nuanțe purpurii. Totul
Se schimbă și se mișcă în secunda împărțită între trecutul
Tot mai vast al verii și revenirea dură a iernii, o clipă
Pleacă din stație după program,
O alta sosește la peronul următor. Totul
Merge aproape ceas: frunzele plutesc în derivă
Căzute de pe crengi și ni se adună încet la picioare,
Alunecându-ne peste glezne, iar anotimpul începe mișcându-se
În jurul nostru chiar când vremea lui plină de culoare ne mișcă pe noi,
Chiar când ne trage în buzunarele lui prăfuite, luminate de amurg.
Și-n fiecare an există o clipă repede, uimitoare
Când ne oprim în mijlocul unui lung drum spre casă și
Dintr-odată simțim ceva invizibil și lipsit de greutate
Cum ne atinge umerii, alunecând prin aer:
E vântul autumnal apăsându-ne trupul;
E lumina schimbătoare a căderii de frunze ce cade peste noi.
(pp. 53-54)
Edward Hopper și
Casă lângă calea ferată (1925)
Aici, chiar în miezul zilei,
Casa asta stranie, mătăhăloasă are expresia
Cuiva la care te holbezi, a cuiva care-şi ţine
Respiraţia sub apă, tăcut, în aşteptare;
Casei îi e ruşine cu sine, ruşine
Cu acoperişul ei fantastic, mansardat
Şi cu veranda ei pseudo-gotică, ruşine
Cu umerii şi mâinile ei mari, neîndemânatice.
Dar bărbatul din spatele şevaletului e neîndurător;
E brutal ca lumina soarelui şi crede
Că această casă trebuie să le fi făcut ceva oribil
Oamenilor care au trăit odinioară aici
Pentru că acum e atât de disperat de goală,
Trebuie să-i fi făcut ceva şi cerului
Pentru că şi cerul e cu totul părăsit
Şi golit de sens. Nu sunt
Copaci sau tufişuri nicăieri — casa
Trebuie să fi făcut ceva rău şi pământului.
Tot ce există e o pereche de şine
Îndreptându-se undeva în depărtare. Nu trece nici un tren.
Acum străinul se întoarce zilnic în acest loc
Până ce casa începe să suspecteze că
Omul e şi el nenorocit, nenorocit
Şi chiar ruşinat. În curând casa începe
Să-l privească pe om cu onestitate. Şi cumva
Pânza albă, goală capătă încet
Expresia cuiva lipsit de viaţă,
A cuiva ce-şi ţine respiraţia sub apă.
Şi apoi, într-o zi, omul pur şi simplu dispare.
E doar o ultimă umbră a unei după-amiezi mişcându-se
Peste şine, străbătând
Câmpia întinsă, în amurg.
Bărbatul acesta va picta alte vile părăsite,
Şi geamuri ofilite de cafenele, şi magazine
De provincie cu reclame şterse.
Întotdeauna ele vor avea aceeaşi expresie,
Privirea cu totul goală a cuiva
Care se ştie privit, a unui american mătăhălos,
A cuiva care e pe cale să fie abandonat
Iarăşi, dar de data asta nu mai suportă.
(pp. 59-60)
Vară americană
Fiecare zi era un ceasornic ce-abia se mișca,
un pumn care ne lovea lent înainte și-napoi,
căldura electrică mocnea în aerul purpuriu,
însă fiecare noapte era o falnică minge albă
zburând la mijlocul terenului – „conservă de porumb“ și coborând
printre stelele ce străluceau deasupra diamantului.
Fiecare zi era pereche grea de mănuși din pânză
împingând tomberoane de gunoi într-o gură omnivoră
ce se strecura printre magistrale și alei,
dar fiecare noapte era ca o bâtă
ce prindea viață în mâinile tale, era
prima aruncare bună de un punct.
În acea vară am învățat să trișez la baza a doua
sărind pe rândul aruncătorilor dreptaci
și apoi țâșnind cu capul înainte spre sacul cu nisip.
Am învățat să folosesc schimbătorul de viteze al mașinii tatălui meu
și să parchez cu prietena mea pe plajă,
cu farurile aruncând lumină, apoi stingându-se încet.
Eram un puști de șaisprezece ani din suburbii,
iar fiecare zi era încă o lecție de muncă,
un curs despre cum să devin invizibil pentru ceilalți,
însă fiecare noapte era un Walt Whitman al vacanțelor,
sunetul limpede al unui fluier la ora 5 după-amiaza,
libertatea de a păși afară, în aer liber.
(pp. 143-144)
February 14, 2020
First, I never, ever imagined that insomnia could be brilliant. Hirsch had taken a misery and made it genius. This collection of poems was brought to my attention one morning while listening to The Writer's Almanac. That tiny preview, while brilliant, did not even begin to hint at the poems I found in The Living Fire. A few of my favorites: Incandescence at Dusk, Four A.M., The Reader, Earthly Light, I am Going to Start Living Like a Mystic, The Widening Sky, and After a Long Insomniac Night.
This is a book I need to add to my library so I can return to these words again and again. I highly recommend!
This is a book I need to add to my library so I can return to these words again and again. I highly recommend!
August 10, 2014
Gleaming, crystal, crystal clear poetry that accomplish’s that magic ability to somehow lead me to believe that these were episodes from my own life. This is a writer living a life as a pure unadulterated artist.
May 4, 2016
One of the best books of poetry I've ever read. It's absolutely beautiful.
December 21, 2014
Reverent and plain,/praising and ordinary all at the same time. I don’t know why I like this poet’s voice, I just like it. I hear his academic tone in many of the poems but it doesn’t either enhance or de-enhance my reading of him; it is just his voice, calm, clear, masculine, crafting poetry from the ordinary and “wild gratitude” infusing so many of them. He is not afraid of emotion, nor of struggle and growth, nor of human frailty, or of anything, and it feels like a primal fearlessness that belongs to all of us.
Song Against Natural Selection
The weak survive!
A man with a damaged arm,
a house missing a single brick, one step
torn away from the other steps
the way I was once torn away
from you; this hurts us, it
isn't what we'd imagined, what
we'd hoped for when we were young
and still hoping for, still imagining things,
but we manage, we survive. Sure,
losing is hard work, one limb severed
at a time makes it that much harder
to get around the city, another word
dropped from our vocabularies
and the remaining words are that much heavier
on our tongues, that much further
from ourselves, and yet people
go on talking, speech survives.
It isn't easy giving up limbs,
trying to manage with that much
less to eat each week, that much more
money we know we'll never make,
things we not only can't buy, but
can't afford to look at in the stores;
this hurts us, and yet we manage, we survive
so that losing itself becomes a kind
of song, our song, our only witness
to the way we die, one day at a time;
a leg severed, a word buried: this
is how we recognize ourselves, and why.
A CHINESE VASE
Sometimes I think that my body is a vase
With me in it, a blue-tiled Chinese vase
That I return to, sometimes, in the rain.
It’s raining hard, but inside the little china vase
There is clean white water circling slowly
Through the shadows like a flock of yellow geese
Circling over a small lake, or like the lake itself
Ruffled with wind and geese in a light rain
That is not dirty, or stained, or even ruffled by
The medley of motors and oars and sometimes even sails
That are washed each summer to her knees. It’s raining
In the deep poplars and in the stand of gray pines;
It’s snowing in the mountains, in the Urals, in the
Wastes of Russia that have edged off into China;
The rain has turned to sleet and the sleet
Has turned to snow in the sullen black clouds
That have surfaced in the cracks of that Chinese
Vase, in the wrinkles that have widened like rivers
In that vase of china. It’s snowing harder and harder
Now over the mountains, but inside the mountains
There is a sunlit cave, a small cave, perhaps,
Like a monk’s cell, or like a small pond
With geese and with clear mountain water inside.
Sometimes I think that I come back to my body
The way a penitent or a pilgrim or a poet
Or a whore or a murderer or a very young girl
Comes for the first time to a holy place
To kneel down, to forget the impossible weight
Of being human, to drink clear water.
FALL
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.
Two (Scholarly) Love Poems
1. Dead Sea Scrolls
I was like the words
on a papyrus apocryphon
buried in a cave at Qumran,
and you were the scholar
I had been waiting for
all my life, the one reader
who unravelled the scrolls
and understood the language
and deciphered its mysteries.
Incandescence at Dusk - (Homage to Dionysius the Areopagite)
There is fire in everything,
shining and hidden—
Or so the saint believed. And I believe the saint:
Nothing stays the same
in the shimmering heat
Of dusk during Indian summer in the country.
Out here it is possible to perceive
That those brilliant red welts
slashed into the horizon
Are like a drunken whip
whistling across a horse’s back,
And that round ball flaring in the trees
Is like a coal sizzling
in the mouth of a desert prophet.
Be careful.
Someone has called the orange leaves
sweeping off the branches
The colorful palmprints of God
brushing against our faces.
Someone has called the banked piles
of twigs and twisted veins
The handprints of the underworld
Gathering at our ankles and burning
through the soles of our feet.
We have to bear the sunset deep inside us.
I don’t believe in ultimate things.
I don’t believe in the inextinguishable light
of the other world.
I don’t believe that we will be lifted up
and transfixed by radiance.
One incandescent dusky world is all there is.
But I like this vigilant saint
Who stood by the river at nightfall
And saw the angels descending
as burnished mirrors and fiery wheels,
As living creatures of fire,
as streams of white flame. . . .
1500 years in his wake,
I can almost imagine
his disappointment and joy
When the first cool wind
starts to rise on the prairie,
When the soothing blue rain begins
to fall out of the cerulean night.
Song Against Natural Selection
The weak survive!
A man with a damaged arm,
a house missing a single brick, one step
torn away from the other steps
the way I was once torn away
from you; this hurts us, it
isn't what we'd imagined, what
we'd hoped for when we were young
and still hoping for, still imagining things,
but we manage, we survive. Sure,
losing is hard work, one limb severed
at a time makes it that much harder
to get around the city, another word
dropped from our vocabularies
and the remaining words are that much heavier
on our tongues, that much further
from ourselves, and yet people
go on talking, speech survives.
It isn't easy giving up limbs,
trying to manage with that much
less to eat each week, that much more
money we know we'll never make,
things we not only can't buy, but
can't afford to look at in the stores;
this hurts us, and yet we manage, we survive
so that losing itself becomes a kind
of song, our song, our only witness
to the way we die, one day at a time;
a leg severed, a word buried: this
is how we recognize ourselves, and why.
A CHINESE VASE
Sometimes I think that my body is a vase
With me in it, a blue-tiled Chinese vase
That I return to, sometimes, in the rain.
It’s raining hard, but inside the little china vase
There is clean white water circling slowly
Through the shadows like a flock of yellow geese
Circling over a small lake, or like the lake itself
Ruffled with wind and geese in a light rain
That is not dirty, or stained, or even ruffled by
The medley of motors and oars and sometimes even sails
That are washed each summer to her knees. It’s raining
In the deep poplars and in the stand of gray pines;
It’s snowing in the mountains, in the Urals, in the
Wastes of Russia that have edged off into China;
The rain has turned to sleet and the sleet
Has turned to snow in the sullen black clouds
That have surfaced in the cracks of that Chinese
Vase, in the wrinkles that have widened like rivers
In that vase of china. It’s snowing harder and harder
Now over the mountains, but inside the mountains
There is a sunlit cave, a small cave, perhaps,
Like a monk’s cell, or like a small pond
With geese and with clear mountain water inside.
Sometimes I think that I come back to my body
The way a penitent or a pilgrim or a poet
Or a whore or a murderer or a very young girl
Comes for the first time to a holy place
To kneel down, to forget the impossible weight
Of being human, to drink clear water.
FALL
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.
Two (Scholarly) Love Poems
1. Dead Sea Scrolls
I was like the words
on a papyrus apocryphon
buried in a cave at Qumran,
and you were the scholar
I had been waiting for
all my life, the one reader
who unravelled the scrolls
and understood the language
and deciphered its mysteries.
Incandescence at Dusk - (Homage to Dionysius the Areopagite)
There is fire in everything,
shining and hidden—
Or so the saint believed. And I believe the saint:
Nothing stays the same
in the shimmering heat
Of dusk during Indian summer in the country.
Out here it is possible to perceive
That those brilliant red welts
slashed into the horizon
Are like a drunken whip
whistling across a horse’s back,
And that round ball flaring in the trees
Is like a coal sizzling
in the mouth of a desert prophet.
Be careful.
Someone has called the orange leaves
sweeping off the branches
The colorful palmprints of God
brushing against our faces.
Someone has called the banked piles
of twigs and twisted veins
The handprints of the underworld
Gathering at our ankles and burning
through the soles of our feet.
We have to bear the sunset deep inside us.
I don’t believe in ultimate things.
I don’t believe in the inextinguishable light
of the other world.
I don’t believe that we will be lifted up
and transfixed by radiance.
One incandescent dusky world is all there is.
But I like this vigilant saint
Who stood by the river at nightfall
And saw the angels descending
as burnished mirrors and fiery wheels,
As living creatures of fire,
as streams of white flame. . . .
1500 years in his wake,
I can almost imagine
his disappointment and joy
When the first cool wind
starts to rise on the prairie,
When the soothing blue rain begins
to fall out of the cerulean night.
March 1, 2022
Nesiguranță
Nu ne-am dat seama dacă era un foc pe dealuri
Sau dacă dealurile însele luaseră foc, fumegând și totuși
Incandescente, prea îndepărtate pentru a fi înțelese.
Și-n tot timpul acesta noi călătoream spre
Ceva arzând vag în depăratre -
O umbră la orizont, linia unei falii -
Un vârf albastru și înnorat ce nu păreau nicicum
Să se-ndepărteze sau să se apropie pe măsură ce ne-apropiam.
Și asta-i tot ce știam despre el
Pe când stăteam la fereastră în lumina evanescentă
Sau când ne atingeam și ne îndepărtam unul de celălalt
Pentru a ne întoarce la cărțile noastre. Dar rămânea
Chiar și așa, precum gândul la un cărbune stingându-se
În partea din stânga-sus a piepturilor noastre,
O destinație ce o purtam în lăuntrul nostru.
Și mai erau aceia - erau ei pare cei norocoși? -
Care nu-și dădeau seama că se îndreaptă repede spre el.
Iar văpaia-i aștepta și pe ei.
Nu ne-am dat seama dacă era un foc pe dealuri
Sau dacă dealurile însele luaseră foc, fumegând și totuși
Incandescente, prea îndepărtate pentru a fi înțelese.
Și-n tot timpul acesta noi călătoream spre
Ceva arzând vag în depăratre -
O umbră la orizont, linia unei falii -
Un vârf albastru și înnorat ce nu păreau nicicum
Să se-ndepărteze sau să se apropie pe măsură ce ne-apropiam.
Și asta-i tot ce știam despre el
Pe când stăteam la fereastră în lumina evanescentă
Sau când ne atingeam și ne îndepărtam unul de celălalt
Pentru a ne întoarce la cărțile noastre. Dar rămânea
Chiar și așa, precum gândul la un cărbune stingându-se
În partea din stânga-sus a piepturilor noastre,
O destinație ce o purtam în lăuntrul nostru.
Și mai erau aceia - erau ei pare cei norocoși? -
Care nu-și dădeau seama că se îndreaptă repede spre el.
Iar văpaia-i aștepta și pe ei.
January 13, 2018
Excellent. I read a copy from the library but I will buy my own now that I have seen how wonderful it is.
Read
March 29, 2023I'm not a huge consumer of poetry, but I loved this book. I read it slowly on purpose. I will probably reread it.
March 16, 2024
Ed Hirsch is an American poet that should be read. Notable works in this volume: Dark Tour, Early Sunday Morning, Cotton Candy, and A Partial History of My Stupidity.
February 23, 2025
Solid collection highlighting Hirsch's work
April 12, 2012
13 new poems and selections from 7 other works (For the Sleepwalkers, Wild Gratitude, Night Parade, Earthly Measures, On Love, Lay Back the Darkness, Special Orders)
I enjoy reading chronological poetry anthologies. Often, but not always, the poems either follow each other with ease or the sections are somewhat themed and a poet's development can be studied. Also, there's often that nuanced sense of autobiography. Or, perhaps just the eras of feelings a poet has lived through. Anger, hope, satisfaction, sadness at loss, unraveling. These may be invented and they may be real. The reader hovers at the edges of the poet's psyche, but opposite real life, can't see the action or the events, only the thoughts that are exposed.
What stays in my mind - insomniac wakefulness, walking - urban/rural/night/haze/darkness, being behind a window and feeling the boundlessness of nature/sky/stars, fire/fieriness/flame. Moments/fleeting moments that last forever. He bares himself, and just as you feel you are being allowed to see him, he escapes. Brilliant. Just plain brilliant.
I enjoy reading chronological poetry anthologies. Often, but not always, the poems either follow each other with ease or the sections are somewhat themed and a poet's development can be studied. Also, there's often that nuanced sense of autobiography. Or, perhaps just the eras of feelings a poet has lived through. Anger, hope, satisfaction, sadness at loss, unraveling. These may be invented and they may be real. The reader hovers at the edges of the poet's psyche, but opposite real life, can't see the action or the events, only the thoughts that are exposed.
What stays in my mind - insomniac wakefulness, walking - urban/rural/night/haze/darkness, being behind a window and feeling the boundlessness of nature/sky/stars, fire/fieriness/flame. Moments/fleeting moments that last forever. He bares himself, and just as you feel you are being allowed to see him, he escapes. Brilliant. Just plain brilliant.
February 8, 2011
I'm glad this poet came my way (through a third hand recommendation). I'm not always thrilled with mainstream academic poets, but there is a heart felt authenticity in much of what Hirsch writes, and a few gems scattered throughout this collection, e.g., "... Because it is dusk, Yes,/ dusk with its desperate colors of erasure."
Read
August 24, 2010Prepare for the 2010 Poets Forum in New York City (October 28-30) by reading Hirsch's newest book of poetry, and check out the Poets Forum 2010 bookshelf for the latest collections by each of the poets participating in the Poets Forum. Happy reading!
June 6, 2010
A must-read for poetry lovers: http://www.joiedelivresamerica.blogsp...
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