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 More Quotes by Edward Hirsch More Quotes From Edward Hirsch A hook shot kisses the rim and hangs there, helplessly, but doesn't drop and for once our gangly starting center boxes out his man and times his jump perfectly, gathering the orange leather/from the air like a cherished possession. Edward Hirsch kissing basketball men I need to live like that crooked tree--... Edward Hirsch tree wind needs Works of art imitate and provoke other works of art, the process is the source of art itself. Edward Hirsch source process art Read poems to yourself in the middle of the night. Turn on a single lamp and read them while you're alone in an otherwise dark room or while someone else sleeps next to you. Read them when you're wide awake in the early morning, fully alert. Say them over to yourself in a place where silence reigns and the din of the culture — the constant buzzing noise that surrounds us — has momentarily stopped. These poems have come from a great distance to find you. Edward Hirsch distance sleep morning I did not know the work of mourning Is a labor in the dark We carry inside ourselves Edward Hirsch mourning labor dark I have tried to remember throughout that poetry is made by flesh-and-blood human beings. It is a bloody art. It lives on a human scale and thrives when it is passed from hand to hand. Edward Hirsch hands blood art I am a tiny seashell Edward Hirsch ocean body sound The imagination is an organ of understanding. And the imagination needs all the faculties at hand, all the sensibility, all the conscious and unconscious intelligence it can galvanize to fulfill its luminous mission. Edward Hirsch understanding imagination hands The way to become a poet is to read poetry and to imitate what you read and to read passionately and widely and in as involved a way as you can. Edward Hirsch involved poet way In the Middle Ages, the troubadour poets invented the concept of courtly love--a fantasy love, a noble passion, which was also extra-marital and thus inevitably thwarted, illicit, adulterous. One of the medieval terms for it was amour honestus (honest love). I've always wondered why this passionate ideal--masochistic, spiritual-travelled with such wildfire throughout Europe. My poem, a ghazal, takes up the subject. Edward Hirsch passion spiritual europe Cafeteria-style education, combined with the unwillingness of our schools to place demands on students, has resulted in a steady diminishment of commonly shared information between generations and between young people themselves. Edward Hirsch education people school Television watching does reduce reading and often encroaches on homework. Much of it is admittedly the intellectual equivalent of junk food. But in some respects, such as its use of standard written English, television watching is acculturative. Edward Hirsch television-watching intellectual reading And it was the title August 13th for most of the way and then near the end, sometime in the process, I got the idea that maybe that would be a somewhat bland title and I got the idea for wild gratitude, which I'm very proud of as a title. So, I think it works best when you find it in the process. Edward Hirsch gratitude august thinking 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." Edward Hirsch gratitude august book 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. Edward Hirsch titles ends writing 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. Edward Hirsch space writing thinking Sometimes the title comes to you at the beginning, sometimes it comes at the end. The very best way in my experience is when it comes in the middle. Edward Hirsch titles sometimes way Now, that can be a traditional form or it can be something you're inventing. It can be the development of a metaphor, the working through of a metaphor. Edward Hirsch metaphor form development 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. Edward Hirsch emotional writing ideas And what I've found over time is that for me to write a poem that I think is worthy that I can live with, two things have to happen. Edward Hirsch writing two thinking
