287 Quotes by Edward Hirsch

A certain construct of emotions that really define who you are and who you will become and I feel very much that my childhood is very alive inside of me, very close to me, very much part of me. And it’s a sometimes painful, sometimes joyous inexhaustible resource for poetry.

And when my second book had come out, “Wild Gratitude,” I went to Pearl London’s class and she worked through different drafts of poems and there were the drafts of my poem, Wild Gratitude, and I saw that I had begun the poem with the title August 13th.

I think the deepest thing is that many fiction writers tell stories but are not elegant writers. But, we’re not writing journalism when we’re making literature.

A stress on the system and I think a painful thing for many young poets who are looking to find a life in poetry that they’re not going to be able to find.

And a lot of poetry is putting yourself back into the state of wonder that you have before things when you’re a child. It’s not only a joyous wonder, it’s sometimes a grief stricken wonder.

I mean, when I was young I could write all through the night and I loved to work late into the night. Now that I’m older I work really well in the early morning when your synapses are firing a little better. But I work at different times of the day.

That you write a phrase or you think of something and it seems to have a deeper charge because the title has to be some kind of marker, something setting out a space, creating a space for what’s going to come.

It’s not important – it’s not necessary that you read everything. What is necessary is that you care about things that you read and that you find something that really matters to you and you try and make something like that.

And my experience is the best titles, for me, emerge in the process of writing. They don’t usually come at the very beginning and hopefully they don’t come at the very end because then it’s getting late in the day.