Edward Hirsch

“Works of art imitate and provoke other works of art, the process is the source of art itself.”

“In every culture, in every language, there is expressive play, expressive word play; there's language use to different purposes that we would call poetry.”

“Our culture has become increasingly intolerant of that acute sorrow, that intense mental anguish and deep remorse which may be defined as grief. We want to medicate such sorrow away.”

“When I was young, I wrote everything, and I thought I would be an all around writer, that I would write everything.”

“There have always been great defenses of poetry, and I've tried to write mine, and I think all of my work and criticism is a defense of poetry to try and keep something alive in poetry.”

“My focus is on the reader and that the poet's job is not to inspire himself or herself. The poet's job is to inspire some future reader.”

“Poetry itself hasn't been well served by poets who fled to the margins.”

“A novel takes place over time. It's a historical narrative, and it needs to have a series of peaks and valleys and the move through. You can't just start at the highest pitch and stay there, but you can in a lyric poem.”

“There's never been a culture without poetry in the history of the world.”

“I did not know the work of mourningIs like carrying a bag of cementUp a mountain at nightThe mountaintop is not in sightBecause there is no mountaintopPoor Sisyphus griefI did not know I would struggleThrough a ragged underbrushWithout an upward path...Look closely and you will seeAlmost everyone carrying bagsOf cement on their shouldersThat’s why it takes courageTo get out of bed in the morningAnd climb into the day.”

“Rhythm is sound in motion. It is related to the pulse, the heartbeat, the way we breathe. It rises and falls. It takes us into ourselves; it takes us out of ourselves.”

“There are a lot of poems where I am questing for God. I don't think there is any finding of God.”

“I don't think poetry will die, but I think that poetry does demand a certain kind of attention to language. It does demand a certain space in order to read it, and I think that space is somewhat threatened by the lack of attention that people have and the amount of time that they give to things.”

“Throughout his work, Philip Levine's most powerful commitment has been to the failed and lost, the marginal, the unloved, the unwanted.”

“I aspire to a poetry of great formal integrity, deep passion and high intellect, and I have many models for how to do that.”

“Poetry takes courage because you have to face things and you try to articulate how you feel.”

“Poetry is meant to inspire readers and listeners, to connect them more deeply to themselves even as it links them more fully to others. But many people feel put off by the terms of poetry, its odd vocabulary, its notorious difficulty.”

“There's something really unnatural about losing a child, and there's something unnatural about having to write an elegy for your child, but I felt that I wanted people to know what he was like.”

“I don't think you can read poetry while you're watching television very well.”

“I believe in rooting poems in actual places, even if you move into some other extraordinary realm.”