Edward Hirsch

"The line is a way of thinking in poetry, by poetry..it paces the poem."

"These ruinous days of Autumn.At dusk, the brightness seeps through the crumbling air, at dusk the air gathers up the brightness"

"I was never able to pray but let me inscribe my name in the book of waves."

"Poetry is a voicing, a calling forth, words waiting to be vocalized."

"Inspiration is inbreathing, indwelling, poetry can never be entirely willed. It may be true a poet is given only a single line but that line is a gift from the unconscious, intution , a perception."

"There is no true poetry unconcious inspiration."

"For most of history poetry has been an oral art, it retains the vestiges of orality, an experience embedded in the sensuality of sounds."

"The poem is an original and unique creation, but it is reading and recitation: participation."

"The poet creates it; the people by recitation recreate it. Poet and reader (hearer) are moments of the same reality."

"The poem is an act beyond paraphrase because what is being said is always inseparable from the way it is being said."

"Poetry is a form of necessary speech."

"Hirsch's poems are compassionate , reverential , sometimes relievingly ruthless."

"Examples of Hirsch poems"

"Extract links Hirsch's 'Poets Glossary'"