Jane Hirshfield

Jan 15, 2025 | orisonbooks.com | Jane Hirshfield |Sarah Ali |Warsan Shire |Li-Young Lee

Over the five sessions of this discussion-oriented class, we’ll delve into the particulars of how a wide range of spiritual poems from diverse traditions and perspectives achieve their impacts on the reader. We’ll also explore ways in which the poems under consideration might serve as springboards for our own poems. Participants will have opportunities to share their new drafts with the group.

Nov 1, 2024 | poetryfoundation.org | Jane Hirshfield

I sat under shelter in downpours—the chair was light, it could have been easily moved. I wept into tissues pulled from a boxthen threw them away, whilefive linen handkerchiefs stayed folded inside a drawer. I stood with fireflies any night I was able. I fed the world’s mosquitoes who fed the world’s bats. My left hand believed it could hold my rightwhen the hammer. My right hand believed it could hold my leftwhen the fire.

Nov 1, 2024 | poetryfoundation.org | Jane Hirshfield

My life asks me a question. I suggest a better question, one I like more the sound of, with more pleasing grammar. My life humors me. My life asks me that. I don’t know an answer. Life is stubborn and clever. Life says: you must choose. I can’t choose. I leave the question. I go into the garden and weed. My life weeds with me. The knees of my pants are stained.

Apr 9, 2024 | lithub.com | Jane Hirshfield

Language and literature, made only of words, live both in words and beyond them. Sometimes between them. But also, always, in us: their human practitioners, beneficiaries, chorus, convocation, cocreators, progeny, and flock. When I was seven or eight years old, I joined that congregation, going into a New York City stationery store on First Avenue between 20th and 21st Streets to scan the circular wire racks near the front door.

Apr 1, 2024 | newyorker.com | Jane Hirshfield

Today, my hope is vertical. Tomorrow it will be horizontal. The next day, cloudy. My hope is like a Greek myth:exchanging skin for bark,bark for scales,scales for the hollow bones of a bird. In these ways my hopeattempts to escape its fate. In myth, hope surely knows,escape is useless. Still, hope will try. I, who will someday leave behindthis three-dimensioned puzzle,pity my hope. Poorling, I say to my hope,even I cannot spare you,even I cannot make you mortal.