How silently the heart pivots on its hinge. Jane Hirshfield More Quotes by Jane Hirshfield More Quotes From Jane Hirshfield One breath taken completely; one poem, fully written, fully read - in such a moment, anything can happen. Jane Hirshfield anything-can-happen moments taken At some point I realized that you don't get a full human life if you try to cut off one end of it, that you need to agree to the entire experience, to the full spectrum of what happens. Jane Hirshfield cutting trying needs I write because to write a new sentence, let alone a new poem, is to cross the threshold into both a larger existence and a profound mystery. A thought was not there, then it is. An image, a story, an idea about what it is to be human, did not exist, then it does. With every new poem, an emotion new to the heart, to the world, speaks itself into being. Jane Hirshfield heart writing ideas How fine is the mesh of death. You can almost see through it. Jane Hirshfield fine mesh death Time ... brings us everything we have and are, then comes with a back-loader and starts taking it all away. Jane Hirshfield time Everything has two endings- a horse, a piece of string, a phone call. Before a life, air. And after. As silence is not silence, but a limit of hearing. Jane Hirshfield horse phones two Near even a candle, the visible heat. So it is with a person in love. Jane Hirshfield heat persons love Hyesims poems: transformative as walking high granite mountains by moonlight, with fragrant herbs underfoot and a thermos of clear tea in the backpack. Their bedrock is thusness, their images beauty is pellucid and new, their view without limit. The shelf of essential Zen poets for American readers grows larger with this immediately indispensable collection. Jane Hirshfield mountain views tea It's one of the saving graces in a life, to be able to perceive one's own and others' absurdity, to notice our shared human frailties and be able, at least some of the time, to smile rather than grimace. Like most people, I must have started out with a comic worldview in my cupboard. Jane Hirshfield saving grace people Metaphors think with the imagination and the senses. The hot chili peppers in them explode in the mouth and the mind. Jane Hirshfield imagination mind thinking In my poems though, as you say, the comic arrived fairly late. This doubtless has something to do with growing older. A person who's seen a bit of the world can't help but notice how foolish is the self-centeredness we bring to our tiny slice of existence. Jane Hirshfield centeredness self world The trick, though, is to not lose compassion, to not allow the sense of absurdity to outweigh the awareness of real beings, with real feelings. Mean-spirited humor turns the world into cardboard, the way Midas's simple-minded greed turned food into inedible and useless stuff. Jane Hirshfield real simple mean Metaphors get under your skin by ghosting right past the logical mind. Jane Hirshfield mind writing past In the dream life you don't deliberately set out to dream about a house night after night; the dream itself insists you look at whatever is trying to come into visibility. Jane Hirshfield dream house night 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. Jane Hirshfield oil mind heart Wrong solitude vinegars the soul, right solitude oils it. Jane Hirshfield oil solitude soul Between certainty and the real, an ancient enmity. Jane Hirshfield enmity ancient real Good poems ask us to have complex minds and hearts. Even simple-of-surface poems want that. Perhaps those are the ones that want it most of all, since that's where they do their work: in the unspoken complexities, understood off the page. Jane Hirshfield simple mind heart I need more and more silence, it feels. Poems don't leap into my mind when I'm distracted, turned outward, with other people, listening to music. Jane Hirshfield silence listening people This garden is no metaphor - more a task that swallows you into itself, earth using, as always, everything it can. Jane Hirshfield essentials tasks garden
