287 Quotes by Edward Hirsch

Books and newspapers assume a “common reader” that is, a person who knows the things known by other literate persons in the culture. Obviously, such assumptions are never identical from writer to writer, but they show a remarkable consistency.

One, something emotional has to be at stake. There has to be something important for me that I’m writing about. And then two, I have to have a formal idea. Something has to be being worked out in poetry.

That is many poets don’t know how to tell a story and they don’t have a sense of how to put things in order to tell a story and we thought the poets could learn from fiction writers something about developing a character over time who wasn’t just you and also creating a narrative structure.

There’s the brilliant audacity of youth that poets strike upon in their earliest work sometimes that they never can hit upon again.

I just think that limits the kinds of experiences that people can have with poetry. But, poetry will survive; I don’t worry about that. But, I do think that it may save fewer souls if people can’t pay attention.

Poetry is a voicing, a calling forth, and the lyric poem exists somewhere in the region – the register – between speech and song.

The mysterious thing about writing poetry is that when you’re – when things are going poorly, when you’re not thinking well, even making two sentences together is extremely hard and I just can’t make the connections.

You’re alone with yourself and your own feelings and that gives you deeper access to what you need to get in touch with to write poetry.

I think that as long as you have other poets before you and that you can learn from them, then it’s always open ended for you.