211 Quotes by Jane Hirshfield

Near even a candle, the visible heat. So it is with a person in love.

I'd say that the middle stanza is closer: that's the place where the poem ranges unexpectedly into a different realm.

How sad they are, the promises we never return to. They stay in our mouths, roughen the tongue, lead lives of their own.

I thought I would love you forever—and, a little, I may, in the way I still move toward a crate, knees bent, or reach for a man: as one might stretch for the three or four fruit that lie in the sun at the top of the tree; too ripe for any moment but this, they open their skin at first touch, yielding sweetness, sweetness and heat, and in me, each time since, the answering yes.

Let the vow of this day keep itself wildly and wholly Spoken and silent, surprise you inside your ears Sleeping and waking, unfold itself inside your eyes Let its fierceness and tenderness hold you Let its vastness be undisguised in all your days.

Time-awareness does indeed watermark my books and my life.

Poetry's task is to increase the available stock of reality, R P Blackmur said.

The pressed oil of words can blaze up into music, into image, into the heart and mind's knowledge. The lit and shadowed places within us can be warmed.

Metaphors get under your skin by ghosting right past the logical mind.