It's hard to think that say Shakespeare could have written "The Tempest" when he was young. It seems to be reflective work or retrospective work. Edward Hirsch More Quotes by Edward Hirsch More Quotes From Edward Hirsch I would say there are different kinds of poems. There are things that poets in the history of poetry hit upon when they're very young that can never be outdone and it's a remarkable, strange experience when you think of say Arthur Rimbaud who write poetry between the ages of 17 and 21 whose career was over by the time he was 22. Edward Hirsch careers writing thinking A certain kind of poetry looks back at experience from an older perspective. Edward Hirsch perspective kind looks Now, as I've gotten older I've been able to write more quickly. Sometimes I get in the space of something and I can do a lot in a day. Edward Hirsch able space writing So, the result though is by the time I've got something, it's been worked over so many times that although I do make changes as the end, often by the time I've gotten it, it's pretty much completed. Edward Hirsch making-changes results ends So, it's a continual process of trial and error and then I find things and I throw it out and start again, but I keep writing it over again. Edward Hirsch trial-and-error errors writing 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. Edward Hirsch eight writing two I wish I wrote drafts and then revised them, but I don't. What I do is I seem to revise as I go. Edward Hirsch seems wish I was once doing a question and answer period with the novelist Jane Smiley in a bookstore and someone asked us what our processes were and Jane said hers and then I said mine and Jane said, "Well, if I had a student like that I'd force him never to write like that again because you could never write a novel in the way that you write poetry." Edward Hirsch bookstores novelists writing think what you hope for is that at different times of your life you're able to write the poetry that reflects the moment that you're in on your own journey. Edward Hirsch journey writing thinking I think there are different kinds of poetry for different stages of life and there's the wild, exuberance of youth, there's the painful agony of midlife experience, there's the late poetry in the presence of death. Edward Hirsch agony different thinking And sometimes you look at the first poems by someone and you go, "They have freshness and a sense of wonder that is never recaptured again by that poet." Edward Hirsch sometimes looks firsts There's the brilliant audacity of youth that poets strike upon in their earliest work sometimes that they never can hit upon again. Edward Hirsch audacity brilliant youth Often you've read another poem that you think is so beautiful that you'd like to make something like that. And so you try to make a sonnet that works in a certain kind of way, or you try to make something that's songlike, or you create a refrain, or you love the way a poem works in two line stanzas and you try to do that. Edward Hirsch beautiful two thinking I don't have a set schedule to work on poetry at any given time, at the same time every day, but I do try to work on poetry every day and I do find some time every day that I can with some exceptions to work on poetry. Edward Hirsch schedules given trying But, that was the beginning, though I didn't start writing until I was in high school and when I was in high school I really began to write poetry with great energy and enthusiasm. Edward Hirsch energy writing school Then I found another one, grandpa's poem. It turned out it had been written by Emily Brontë and it wasn't my grandfather's poem at all, although my response to it, I think, was pretty much the same, I just had the author wrong. Edward Hirsch grandpa grandfather thinking In a way, that's also a recognition that Dante needs Virgil and that the Inferno needs the Aeneid and that the epic needs a model and that for Dante to write this great poem he needs someone to come before him and he turns to Virgil's text, especially book six where Aeneas goes down into the underworld. And for me, that's a model of the poet's relationship to previous poetry, to another poetry as calling out for guidance. Edward Hirsch epic writing book There are many poets that use as my models. In my first book of poems, I had several for the "Sleepwalkers," I had several poems that were apprentice poems like this in which I take a walk with a poet who is no longer alive. Edward Hirsch use book firsts I walk with Federico Garcia Lorca around the Upper West Side in Manhattan because that was a neighborhood he lived in and I imagine walking around Paris with Cesar Vallejo, a great Peruvian poet who lived in Paris. And I kind of create the walk as a kind of drama of my apprenticeship. Edward Hirsch manhattan paris drama I think one of the things that distinguished my work from the beginning when I was in college was my turning towards poetry from other countries. Edward Hirsch college country thinking
