RESOLUTION
And so,
we finally fell asleep like that,
loose in each other’s arms,
exhaustion itself a ravishment,
emptied of arguing, scavenging
old ground of our history,
the long record of loving,
and loving badly.
At first light,
I woke for good,
each time I shifted,
breathing our smell
in the sheets. And I
thought back to the last
tired words you had spoken,
of that late winter midnight
you sat with the knife,
thinking only how
and where you would do it.
You did not even think
I would care.
It was your own white arms
that stopped you, the thin
curtain of skin, the pale,
raised ribbons of veins.
Innocent arms, you thought,
how can I hurt them,
the quiet in your voice
as you told me, its own
separate finality.
Now, one arm lay absent by my chest,
your face had turned away,
and there was nothing
I could do but listen
to your breath,
its soft suck, and release,
and lean into the pulse
in your throat,
like a steady step
on the solitary journey
of grieving.
Thursday, February 27, 2014
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
Deborah's "Radiant Season"
RADIANT SEASON
If you come soon,
the budded tips of campion
will be split, the deep cerise
of coronaria, such delicate velvet
on the study, silver-green stems,
you cannot help but feel them,
and if it is morning,
the wild carrot rimmed with dew
along its fronded leaves,
its thick, hairy stalks,
I will spill in your palm
the brimming wet petals
of milky froth,
and touch your fingers
to the tight, indigo buttons
of bush pea, and the cupped
yellow silk of sundrops.
When you come,
flanged with light, separation
slipping from us
like sleep, like garments,
I will stand with my hands open,
I will take your hands
and hold them out
to all that is supple,
flowering, and wild.
If you come soon,
the budded tips of campion
will be split, the deep cerise
of coronaria, such delicate velvet
on the study, silver-green stems,
you cannot help but feel them,
and if it is morning,
the wild carrot rimmed with dew
along its fronded leaves,
its thick, hairy stalks,
I will spill in your palm
the brimming wet petals
of milky froth,
and touch your fingers
to the tight, indigo buttons
of bush pea, and the cupped
yellow silk of sundrops.
When you come,
flanged with light, separation
slipping from us
like sleep, like garments,
I will stand with my hands open,
I will take your hands
and hold them out
to all that is supple,
flowering, and wild.
Deborah's "The Angle Yet To Come"
THE ANGEL YET TO COME
What it must be like
to be without
the shawl of illusion,
to be past
all past consolations,
the difficult arts
of belief and blame,
to climb
by a means of falling,
a hauling up
of hands and voices,
unwinding the lifeline
that is scar and seam,
through years like rooms,
where to be motherless
is not to be unmothered,
and to be loved is not saved,
nor saved, spared
either burning bed or holy fire,
where truth is older, harder,
with no power to undo
and even bread is easier to share —
what must it be
ever to choose
without promise,
solace, or cease,
the stubborn stone
of the human.
What it must be like
to be without
the shawl of illusion,
to be past
all past consolations,
the difficult arts
of belief and blame,
to climb
by a means of falling,
a hauling up
of hands and voices,
unwinding the lifeline
that is scar and seam,
through years like rooms,
where to be motherless
is not to be unmothered,
and to be loved is not saved,
nor saved, spared
either burning bed or holy fire,
where truth is older, harder,
with no power to undo
and even bread is easier to share —
what must it be
ever to choose
without promise,
solace, or cease,
the stubborn stone
of the human.
Deborah's "Radiant Season"
RADIANT SEASON
If you come soon,
the budded tips of campion
will be split, the deep cerise
of coronaria, such delicate velvet
on the study, silver-green stems,
you cannot help but feel them,
and if it is morning,
the wild carrot rimmed with dew
along its fronded leaves,
its thick, hairy stalks,
I will spill in your palm
the brimming wet petals
of milky froth,
and touch your fingers
to the tight, indigo buttons
of bush pea, and the cupped
yellow silk of sundrops.
When you come,
flanged with light, separation
slipping from us
like sleep, like garments,
I will stand with my hands open,
I will take your hands
and hold them out
to all that is supple,
flowering, and wild.
If you come soon,
the budded tips of campion
will be split, the deep cerise
of coronaria, such delicate velvet
on the study, silver-green stems,
you cannot help but feel them,
and if it is morning,
the wild carrot rimmed with dew
along its fronded leaves,
its thick, hairy stalks,
I will spill in your palm
the brimming wet petals
of milky froth,
and touch your fingers
to the tight, indigo buttons
of bush pea, and the cupped
yellow silk of sundrops.
When you come,
flanged with light, separation
slipping from us
like sleep, like garments,
I will stand with my hands open,
I will take your hands
and hold them out
to all that is supple,
flowering, and wild.
Deborah's "Boy Blowing Bubbles"
BOY BLOWING BUBBLES
They erupt
with the suddenness
and ease of his laughter,
rising like the high,
wobbly syllables
of his singing.
Shimmering, drifting,
perfect in their roundness
as planets in a book,
they issue forth
from his lips
where he breathes
through the wand
like a birthday candle
he is wishing on.
Continuously,
they ride away
in the curve of leaves,
scoop of sky,
rolling without wind
through midsummer,
his gaze steady and lifted
as any creator
to the beautiful,
mortal world
he can still take
into his heart
without misgiving.
Deborah's "The third lesson:Betrayal"
THE THIRD LESSON: BETRAYAL
Let the wells
of our love
sicken
the forest
of our refuge
flame
let the fruit
of our desire
be as dust and barren
let there be
bitterness
anew with every sun
hatred
heralded
as rain
may the cradle
of our walls falter
and the seas writhe
may the moon
be riven
and the stars blister
and whatever sang
our joy
bite its tongue in two
and wail.
Deborah's "Leaving"
LEAVING
I was waiting for you
at the end of the long
gravel road that wound
through the woods,
the house barely visible
back in the trees,
two windows lit
and balancing
November’s early dark.
Walking out, I had watched
a sky turning from bone
to ash to black.
I had money and night
things stuffed in my bag,
I hoped you would see me
in the headlights.
A soft rain began.
It fell on the shoulders
of my upturned coat,
wet my face, my hair,
I could hear it falling
through the tough, hard
oaks and beeches,
the late autumn leaves
still stubborn on the trees,
sounding like birdshot,
or grains of sand
steadily, finely pouring.
And I thought suddenly
how I wanted to forget you,
forget everything,
that moment
go utterly blank,
so that I could
come back
and remember it
all from the start
to that waiting,
alone in the fresh,
cold night
and the rain
ticking, ticking.
at the end of the long
gravel road that wound
through the woods,
the house barely visible
back in the trees,
two windows lit
and balancing
November’s early dark.
Walking out, I had watched
a sky turning from bone
to ash to black.
I had money and night
things stuffed in my bag,
I hoped you would see me
in the headlights.
A soft rain began.
It fell on the shoulders
of my upturned coat,
wet my face, my hair,
I could hear it falling
through the tough, hard
oaks and beeches,
the late autumn leaves
still stubborn on the trees,
sounding like birdshot,
or grains of sand
steadily, finely pouring.
And I thought suddenly
how I wanted to forget you,
forget everything,
that moment
go utterly blank,
so that I could
come back
and remember it
all from the start
to that waiting,
alone in the fresh,
cold night
and the rain
ticking, ticking.
Deborah's "Hard Climb Road"
HARD CLIMB ROAD
for my grandmother
for my grandmother
I
Driving home to her funeral in September,
we head down the Piedmont,
taking the freeways that run by fields
and outlet malls, morning stretching away
under the benign and vacant blue skies
Carolina is known for.
A Greensboro station plays oldies in the car,
and loss only lasts till the last dance.
Outside Mt. Airy, we pick up two lanes
through Cana, Galax, and Fancy Gap,
past the hillbilly markets and stands,
molasses, apples, and Dixie kitsch,
trailing pony-tailed girls in pickups.
The day is cool and clear, a weekend
to dream, or retrieve, of family rides
in fall, a peaceful film unfolding
of southeastern hills and farms,
silos and satellite dishes,
sheep still as stones in the fields.
In Virginia, the new road’s half done,
shale shingling up where the cut is rawest.
My sons sing out at every crane,
thrill through blasting zones.
We fly down the far side of vistas
that make majesty almost tangible,
forests like a murky pool we sink in,
greening as we surface.
we head down the Piedmont,
taking the freeways that run by fields
and outlet malls, morning stretching away
under the benign and vacant blue skies
Carolina is known for.
A Greensboro station plays oldies in the car,
and loss only lasts till the last dance.
Outside Mt. Airy, we pick up two lanes
through Cana, Galax, and Fancy Gap,
past the hillbilly markets and stands,
molasses, apples, and Dixie kitsch,
trailing pony-tailed girls in pickups.
The day is cool and clear, a weekend
to dream, or retrieve, of family rides
in fall, a peaceful film unfolding
of southeastern hills and farms,
silos and satellite dishes,
sheep still as stones in the fields.
In Virginia, the new road’s half done,
shale shingling up where the cut is rawest.
My sons sing out at every crane,
thrill through blasting zones.
We fly down the far side of vistas
that make majesty almost tangible,
forests like a murky pool we sink in,
greening as we surface.
Deborah's "Two A.M"
TWO A.M.
I lie folded as if for burial,
your sleeping, stuttering gutturals
wheezing like an engine
that won’t turn over.
Some large nocturnal animal
is chuck-chucking on the porch,
and a skitter sloops the roof
like squirrels or first rain.
I listen to the tinker of dark,
the creak I hear as wind
and not wind, think of women
bloodied in their beds,
nipples sliced, the head
on a shelf, there may be tapes,
the authorities won’t say,
they say this beats all.
Whenever I dream this, this is
true, whenever I think this,
this is happening.
To hear the lock life would
be what I always expected.
I long for rain,
I long for my child to cry out,
but he goes on as only
he can with the steady
small bellows of his belly,
his sleep soured head
in the crook of his arm.
your sleeping, stuttering gutturals
wheezing like an engine
that won’t turn over.
Some large nocturnal animal
is chuck-chucking on the porch,
and a skitter sloops the roof
like squirrels or first rain.
I listen to the tinker of dark,
the creak I hear as wind
and not wind, think of women
bloodied in their beds,
nipples sliced, the head
on a shelf, there may be tapes,
the authorities won’t say,
they say this beats all.
Whenever I dream this, this is
true, whenever I think this,
this is happening.
To hear the lock life would
be what I always expected.
I long for rain,
I long for my child to cry out,
but he goes on as only
he can with the steady
small bellows of his belly,
his sleep soured head
in the crook of his arm.
Deborah's "Passage"
PASSAGE
The emptying moon tips
just above the treeline.
We are the only car on the road.
So dark the night, so close
the line of trees,
it is as if we had gone
just above the treeline.
We are the only car on the road.
So dark the night, so close
the line of trees,
it is as if we had gone
under the earth, or the ill-
colored wick of moon was
the lantern astern on a ship
that had cut us adrift.
We move in another dimension.
Moths swim up in our headlights
colored wick of moon was
the lantern astern on a ship
that had cut us adrift.
We move in another dimension.
Moths swim up in our headlights
like ghost fish darting
in black water. The silence
of acceptance of calamity
seeps through the glass.
Already your knuckles
look like coral on the wheel.
in black water. The silence
of acceptance of calamity
seeps through the glass.
Already your knuckles
look like coral on the wheel.
The children sleep in shapes
they will settle to in time
on the ocean floor, their bones
uncollected, like a necklace
broken in the sand.
What did any of it come to?
they will settle to in time
on the ocean floor, their bones
uncollected, like a necklace
broken in the sand.
What did any of it come to?
The only light is what
we carry with us.
There is salt in my kiss.
we carry with us.
There is salt in my kiss.
Jane's "The Decision"
The Decision
Jane Hirshfield
There is a moment before a shape
hardens, a color sets.
Before the fixative or heat of kiln.
The letter might still be taken
from the mailbox.
The hand held back by the elbow,
the word kept between the larynx pulse
and the amplifying drum-skin of the room’s air.
The thorax of an ant is not as narrow.
The green coat on old copper weighs more.
Yet something slips through it —
looks around,
sets out in the new direction, for other lands.
Not into exile, not into hope. Simply changed.
As a sandy track-rut changes when called a Silk Road:
it cannot be after turned back from.
-Alot of figurative language used in the poem such as shapes and color sets , fixative or heat of kiln. Basically saying that decisions slip right through in odd directions. Also how when you make a decision most times its no turning back. it makes me feel like she is saying some decisions are taking from you . Some can be changed and others cant .
-Alot of figurative language used in the poem such as shapes and color sets , fixative or heat of kiln. Basically saying that decisions slip right through in odd directions. Also how when you make a decision most times its no turning back. it makes me feel like she is saying some decisions are taking from you . Some can be changed and others cant .
Jane's "Once,I"
Once, I
Jane Hirshfield
Once, I
was seven Spanish bullocks in a high meadow,
sleepy and nameless.
As-ifness strange to myself, but complete.
Light on the neck-nape
of time
as two wings of one starling,
or lovers so happy
neither needs think of the other.
-This is a revelation to me, a light of some sort, that there was no difference between all the bullocks. They were all one. They were an "I." Just like there is no difference in two wings of a starling. Or two happy lovers who are so in love, that leave apart say anything to each other, they don't even have to think of the other, as "the other". They are one.
-This is a revelation to me, a light of some sort, that there was no difference between all the bullocks. They were all one. They were an "I." Just like there is no difference in two wings of a starling. Or two happy lovers who are so in love, that leave apart say anything to each other, they don't even have to think of the other, as "the other". They are one.
Jane's "My weather"
My Weather
Jane Hirshfield
Wakeful, sleepy, hungry, anxious,
restless, stunned, relieved.
Does a tree also?
A mountain?
A cup holds
sugar, flour, three large rabbit-breaths of air.
I hold these.
- All the words in the first two lines is setting the mood and is visually putting out images for the readers . These words can be used as adjectives or adverbs . A tree and mountain is compared in line 3 and 4. She tells whats in a cup and what it holds .Rabbit-breaths of air symbolizes something deeper.
- All the words in the first two lines is setting the mood and is visually putting out images for the readers . These words can be used as adjectives or adverbs . A tree and mountain is compared in line 3 and 4. She tells whats in a cup and what it holds .Rabbit-breaths of air symbolizes something deeper.
Jane's "I sat in the sun"
I sat in the sun
Jane Hirshfield
I moved my chair into sun
I sat in the sun
the way hunger is moved when called fasting.
-“Hunger,” a natural need, is repositioned by us for the sake of something spiritual. We take something we would ordinarily satisfy and turn it into a devotion. We take a weakness and try to make it a strength.
-“Hunger,” a natural need, is repositioned by us for the sake of something spiritual. We take something we would ordinarily satisfy and turn it into a devotion. We take a weakness and try to make it a strength.
What is strange is how the last line of the poem all the above makes any sense.The first two lines, by contrast, are much more difficult because of the all-too-simple image. “I moved my chair into sun” becomes “I sat in the sun.” “Moved” becomes “sat;” motion terminates in rest. “Chair,” an instrument, disappears in action. “Sun” is revealed as “the sun:” parts become whole, distinctions are made, through experience.
The spiritual is realized. Motion and instrumentality fade away. Knowledge takes on an aspect of the whole and isn’t quite knowledge as a result. What’s interesting is how the need (hunger) and the sacrifice (fasting) are parallel with what might seem hedonism – taking one’s fill of warmth and light on a relaxed, sunny day. I don’t even know this is a mere parallel. The way is the same.
Jane's "A Chair in Snow"
A Chair in Snow
Jane Hirshfield
A chair in snow
should be
like any other object whited
& rounded
and yet a chair in snow is always sad
more than a bed
more than a hat or house
a chair is shaped for just one thing
to hold
a soul its quick and few bendable
hours
perhaps a king
not to hold snow
not to hold flowers
-The mood seems to be presenting sorrow for the speaker seeks power in a chair in the snow. Saying that “A chair in snow should be like any other object whited & rounded and yet a chair in snow is always sad.” as if it is different, and holds ones soul for comfort. Throughout the poem the tone doesn’t change, it seems to be confirming itself, as if this chair is symbolizes loneliness. Words such as “perhaps” and “and yet” give that feeling of confirmation. What the speaker is truly seeing could be a metaphor or literal, but all in all it appears to give the message of ones lonely self being different, notice empower.
-The mood seems to be presenting sorrow for the speaker seeks power in a chair in the snow. Saying that “A chair in snow should be like any other object whited & rounded and yet a chair in snow is always sad.” as if it is different, and holds ones soul for comfort. Throughout the poem the tone doesn’t change, it seems to be confirming itself, as if this chair is symbolizes loneliness. Words such as “perhaps” and “and yet” give that feeling of confirmation. What the speaker is truly seeing could be a metaphor or literal, but all in all it appears to give the message of ones lonely self being different, notice empower.
Jane's "All the Difficult Hours and Minutes"
All the Difficult Hours and Minutes
Jane Hirshfield
All the difficult hours and minutes
are like salted plums in a jar.
Wrinkled, turn steeply into themselves,
they mutter something the color of sharkfins to the glass.
Just so, calamity turns toward calmness.
First the jar holds the umeboshi, then the rice does
-Jane compares the difficult hours and minutes salted plums in a jar . She basically meant that these hours are considered sour, not the type of hours we want. She compares hours to salted plums, wrinkled to steeply others, Color of sharkins to the glass, calamity to calmness. Jane speaks out of terms and it makes much sense to the reader. Real life experience and real life feelings, reality.
All the difficult hours and minutes
are like salted plums in a jar.
Wrinkled, turn steeply into themselves,
they mutter something the color of sharkfins to the glass.
Just so, calamity turns toward calmness.
First the jar holds the umeboshi, then the rice does
-Jane compares the difficult hours and minutes salted plums in a jar . She basically meant that these hours are considered sour, not the type of hours we want. She compares hours to salted plums, wrinkled to steeply others, Color of sharkins to the glass, calamity to calmness. Jane speaks out of terms and it makes much sense to the reader. Real life experience and real life feelings, reality.
-Jane compares the difficult hours and minutes salted plums in a jar . She basically meant that these hours are considered sour, not the type of hours we want. She compares hours to salted plums, wrinkled to steeply others, Color of sharkins to the glass, calamity to calmness. Jane speaks out of terms and it makes much sense to the reader. Real life experience and real life feelings, reality.
Thursday, February 6, 2014
Jane's "The Weighing"
The Weighing
The heart's reasons
seen clearly,
even the hardest
will carry
its whip-marks and sadness
and must be forgiven.
As the drought-starved
eland forgives
the drought-starved lion
who finally takes her,
enters willingly then
the life she cannot refuse,
and is lion, is fed,
and does not remember the other.
So few grains of happiness
measured against all the dark
and still the scales balance.
The world asks of us
only the strength we have and we give it.
Then it asks more, and we give it.
-This poem symbolizes the weight that is carried among all of us. Our hearts carries alotof baggage and we seem to give our all even when its nothing left in us. She also seems to be saying that even when we are scare we still are willing to forgive in any situation. She said "So few grains of happiness
measured against all the dark and still the scales balance". Our happiness seems to still come out of many dark situations thats why it balances. She gives many thought to the fact that were willing, forgiving, Happy, and strong.
seen clearly,
even the hardest
will carry
its whip-marks and sadness
and must be forgiven.
As the drought-starved
eland forgives
the drought-starved lion
who finally takes her,
enters willingly then
the life she cannot refuse,
and is lion, is fed,
and does not remember the other.
So few grains of happiness
measured against all the dark
and still the scales balance.
The world asks of us
only the strength we have and we give it.
Then it asks more, and we give it.
-This poem symbolizes the weight that is carried among all of us. Our hearts carries alotof baggage and we seem to give our all even when its nothing left in us. She also seems to be saying that even when we are scare we still are willing to forgive in any situation. She said "So few grains of happiness
measured against all the dark and still the scales balance". Our happiness seems to still come out of many dark situations thats why it balances. She gives many thought to the fact that were willing, forgiving, Happy, and strong.
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
Jane's "For What Binds Us"
For What Binds Us
There are names for what binds us:
strong forces, weak forces.
Look around, you can see them:
the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,
nails rusting into the places they join,
joints dovetailed on their own weight.
The way things stay so solidly
wherever they've been set down—
and gravity, scientists say, is weak.
And see how the flesh grows back
across a wound, with a great vehemence,
more strong
than the simple, untested surface before.
There's a name for it on horses,
when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,
as all flesh,
is proud of its wounds, wears them
as honors given out after battle,
small triumphs pinned to the chest—
And when two people have loved each other
see how it is like a
scar between their bodies,
stronger, darker, and proud;
how the black cord makes of them a single fabric
that nothing can tear or mend.
The poem For What Binds Us by Jane Hirshfield not only displays a very strong message but is also very intriguing. The first time I read it I was a little taken back by the comparison to open wounds and healing scars to the forces that hold one another together. After going over it time and time again I realize what a good example it really was. She uses scars, cuts, and pain to show our weaknesses and our downfalls but what comes from the wound only makes us stronger. A cut will be open and will cause a person discomfort for a small while but your skin will work it’s way back to being normal. Your skin, as expected will connect again and that is the binding which is such a imperative subject in this poem.
The poem For What Binds Us by Jane Hirshfield not only displays a very strong message but is also very intriguing. The first time I read it I was a little taken back by the comparison to open wounds and healing scars to the forces that hold one another together. After going over it time and time again I realize what a good example it really was. She uses scars, cuts, and pain to show our weaknesses and our downfalls but what comes from the wound only makes us stronger. A cut will be open and will cause a person discomfort for a small while but your skin will work it’s way back to being normal. Your skin, as expected will connect again and that is the binding which is such a imperative subject in this poem.
Jane's "This was once a love poem"
This Was Once a Love Poem | ||
| by Jane Hirshfield | ||
This was once a love poem, before its haunches thickened, its breath grew short, before it found itself sitting, perplexed and a little embarrassed, on the fender of a parked car, while many people passed by without turning their heads. It remembers itself dressing as if for a great engagement. It remembers choosing these shoes, this scarf or tie. Once, it drank beer for breakfast, drifted its feet in a river side by side with the feet of another. Once it pretended shyness, then grew truly shy, dropping its head so the hair would fall forward, so the eyes would not be seen. IT spoke with passion of history, of art. It was lovely then, this poem. Under its chin, no fold of skin softened. Behind the knees, no pad of yellow fat. What it knew in the morning it still believed at nightfall. An unconjured confidence lifted its eyebrows, its cheeks. The longing has not diminished. Still it understands. It is time to consider a cat, the cultivation of African violets or flowering cactus. Yes, it decides: Many miniature cacti, in blue and red painted pots. When it finds itself disquieted by the pure and unfamiliar silence of its new life, it will touch them—one, then another— with a single finger outstretched like a tiny flame.
“This Was Once A Love Poem” is a lovely poem written neither for mere loveliness nor for love of, or to, anyone in particular. Its target is transpersonal.
Here, Jane refers to the basis as “it”. Her body relates to it as a symbol alongside mind and everything else including Nothing. By it she gains a level of objectivity in describing, as details of the poem, past observations of and about herself. These she combines in seemingly free and natural order. Working with fluent control of language strongly intended in a mind of poetic facility and skilled craftsmanship long studied & practiced, she shows a reader facets of her vision of herself while giving indication of that “self” or bodhi which is the source and goal of Zen. | ||
Jane's "A Hand"
A Hand | ||
| by Jane Hirshfield | ||
A hand is not four fingers and a thumb. Nor is it palm and knuckles, not ligaments or the fat's yellow pillow, not tendons, star of the wristbone, meander of veins. A hand is not the thick thatch of its lines with their infinite dramas, nor what it has written, not on the page, not on the ecstatic body. Nor is the hand its meadows of holding, of shaping— not sponge of rising yeast-bread, not rotor pin's smoothness, not ink. The maple's green hands do not cup the proliferant rain. What empties itself falls into the place that is open. A hand turned upward holds only a single, transparent question. Unanswerable, humming like bees, it rises, swarms, departs. | ||
| -I really liked the comparison of the maple leaf to a hand...so possible so "true" feeling.What a lovely, mysterious poem. I like the imagery's seamless progression from the human body to the tree, and from the products of holding an implement to the possibilities that come with letting go. I love the last two couplets - a hand turned upward - and the way the poem ends so abruptly with the word "departs" without any final punctuation. Interesting effect! Jane compares a hand to many differnt elements, A hand to her is not just a hand. Its not just fingers and knuckles its more symbolic . | ||
ABOUT JANE !
Jane HirshfieldJane Hirshfield was born in New York City on February 24, 1953. After receiving her BA from Princeton University in its first graduating class to include women, she went on to study at the San Francisco Zen Center. Her books of poetry include Come, Thief(Knopf, 2011); After (HarperCollins, 2006); Given Sugar, Given Salt(HarperCollins, 2001), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; The Lives of the Heart(HarperCollins, 1997); The October Palace (HarperCollins, 1994); Of Gravity & Angels (Wesleyan University Press, 1988); and Alaya (Quarterly Review of Literature Poetry Series, 1982).She is also the author of Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry(HarperCollins, 1997) and has also edited and cotranslated The Ink Dark Moon: Poems by Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu, Women of the Ancient Court of Japan (Vintage Books, 1990) with Mariko Aratani;Mirabai: Ecstatic Poems (Beacon Press, 2006) with Robert Bly; Women in Praise of the Sacred: Forty-Three Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women (HarperCollins, 1994); and an ebook on Basho, The Heart of Haiku (2011). About her work, the poet Rosanna Warren has said: Hirshfield has elaborated a sensuously philosophical art that imposes a pause in our fast-forward habits of mind. Her poems appear simple, and are not. Her language, in its cleanliness and transparency, poses riddles of a quietly metaphysical nature...Clause by clause, image by image, in language at once mysterious and commonplace, Hirshfield's poems clear a space for reflection and change. They invite ethical awareness, and establish a delicate balance.Poet Kay Ryan has praised Jane Hirshfield, saying: She is that rare thing in contemporary American life, a true person of letters—an eloquent and exacting poet, first, but in addition the author of enduring essays and influential translations and anthologies. Now add to this a life on the hustings, bringing the good news about poetry to nearly every state of the union. Then further add her elegant ambassadorship for poetry in the greater world (think Japan, Poland, China) and you have something that satisfies the old sense of a person of letters—a writer who demonstrates in every possible way that this life matters.Her honors include the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award, Columbia University's Translation Center Award, the Commonwealth Club of California Poetry Medal, the Poetry Center Book Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Rockefeller Foundation. Her work has been selected for seven editions of Best American Poetry. In 2004, Hirshfield was awarded the seventieth Academy Fellowship for distinguished poetic achievement by the Academy of American Poets. In addition to her work as a freelance writer, editor, and translator, Hirshfield has taught in the Bennington MFA Writing Seminars, at UC Berkeley, and at the University of San Francisco. She has been a visiting Poet-in-Residence at Duke University, the University of Alaska, the University of Virginia, and elsewhere, and has been the Elliston Visiting Poet at the University of Cincinnati. She was elected Chancellorof the Academy of American Poets in 2012. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. | ||||
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