Status Updates From Ten Windows: How Great Poem...

jane hirshfield i was unfamiliar with your game……

Ch 10 - 9 Jane Hirshfield: one of the strong points - Sometimes Ms Hirishfield's turn of phrase is felt...just like a poem...from within.  (paraphrasing here...) Poems: brings hope, community, quenches our thirst for connection, brings tears even in the briefest of poems.

Ch 8 American Modern Poetry - The only poet I liked in the chapter was Vietnam vetran Yusef Komunyakaa, poem "Facing it" . He expresses is his emotions while visiting the Vietnam memorial. His writing is absolutely stunning with vivid images that sear into the brain. "Facing It" is a poem that deals with war-related trauma and the act of confronting painful emotions.

Ch 7: "Nothing Gold Can Stay" by Robert Frost. Hirshfield's analysis is over complicated.  For example: "Poems  allow us not only to bear the tally and toll of our transience...." I feel Ms Hirshfield is trying to outdo the poets she's discussing. Colors change ("..nature's first green is gold" ); the sun sets (...so dawn goes down to day"); and seasons change (...nothing gold can stay"). That's it. That's the poem

Ch 6 was not one of Ms Hirshfield's best...too long and concept ("windows" in poems) too vague. Just did not resonate with me.
Good news: read Emily Dickkinson's poem: We Grow Accustomed to the Dark.

Another excellent chapter (5)...with this beautiful thought:
Izumi Shikibu:   Moonlight (beauty, awakening)  will come to a person only if the full range of events and feelings are allowed in as well.

Although the wind
blows terribly here,
moonlight
also leaks between the roof planks
of this ruined house

I thought ch 3 was good....but chapter 4 is excellent!
Bravo, Ms Hirshfield for proving me wrong...you are wel worth reading!!

Jane Hirshfield has made reading this book...a pleasure....if it is only for chapter 3. It is about Basho and his haiku. Just a wonderful summary of who he was and what his poetry meant to him: haiku was the artless expression of a child at play. (pg 91)

Not impressed with  JH's approach and writing. She finally touches on a good concept....then she is off describing language as a person (...getting up to shower and brush its teeth, just a gimmik) or explaning the etymology of words.  Not interesed.  I will try to fish out some tidbits of info.

Jane Hirshfield is getting carried away with her "own inner poet. Her pompous, lofty descriptions ..mediations are too much for  the common woman = me. "While writing a poet is unchained from sadness and free."  This pretentious or vague language...aka jibberish is hard to digest. I do hope the other 9 chapters in this book are better. Fingers crossed