287 Quotes by Edward Hirsch

Poetry takes place in time. It is a durational. Things take place in sequence.

Our sense that things are transient, that everything is passing and then if you want to save something from the endless flux of experience and the world's movement, you have to set down a stake and try and make something that will last.

Poetry takes courage because you have to face things and you try to articulate how you feel.

I write a line and then I revise the line and then I write two lines and then I revise lines one and two and then I write one, two and three and I revise one and two and then I write seven and eight and then I see that should be line four and I continually work it over as I go.

Poetry itself hasn't been well served by poets who fled to the margins.

I think it's true that that's something that poetry can go to school on fiction. I think poetry can go to fiction to learn.

Poetry is a vocation. It is not a career but a calling.

The idea of a poem as a message in a bottle means that it's sent out towards some future reader and the reader who opens that bottle becomes the addressee of the literary text.

Poetry is a form of necessary speech... I have sought to restore the aura of sacred practice that accompanies true poetic creation, to honor both the rational and the irrational elements of poetry.