Deepening Life: Poetic Resonance with Jane Hirshfield

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“I truly feel that all of our creativity, all of our expression, all of our comprehensions of the world are available to us in this moment. It is not a reaching out into the exotic; it is a reaching in to a way of knowing the world, which is enlarged, augmented, clarifying and open.” With each collection she has written, Jane Hirshfield, widely considered as one of America’s preeminent writers and poets of her generation, has continued to search out new ways to increase poetry’s capacities for understanding. This dialogue is an exploration into the world of poetry, with its depth of thought and richness of observation. An evocative mix of control and wildness shines through each portion of this dialogue. (hosted by Michael Toms)

Bio

Jane Hirshfield is the author of nine books of poetry and two collections of essays. She has edited and co-translated four books presenting the work of world poets from the past. Her books have received the Poetry Center Book Award, the California Book Award, and the Donald Hal-Jane Kenyon Prize in American Poetry. Her poems appear in a wide range of prestigious outlets. A resident of Northern California, she is a chancellor emerita of the Academy of American Poets. She presents her work at literary and interdisciplinary events worldwide.

Her poetry books include:

• The October Palace: Poems (HarperCollins 1994)
• The Lives of the Heart: Poems (HarperCollins 1997)
• Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women (HarperCollins 1994)
• Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry (Perennial 1998)
• After: Poems (HarperCollins 2006)
• Given Sugar, Given Salt: Poems (HarperCollins 2001)
• The classic translation of the ancient Japanese court women, The Ink Dark Moon: Love Poems by Onono Komachi and Izumi Shikibu, Women of the Ancient Court of Japan (Vintage 1990)
• Come, Thief: Poems (Knopf 2011)
• Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World (Alfred A. Knopf 2015)
• The Beauty: Poems (Alfred A. Knopf 2015)
• Ledger (Alfred A. Knopf 2020)

To learn more about the work of Jane Hirshfield go to www.facebook.com/janehirshfield.

Topics Explored in This Dialogue

• How you can acknowledge your own inner poet
• What a Zen practice can mean to your everyday life
• How the personal is merged with the cultural milieu
• How certainty that you are certain is the most dangerous thing

Host:  Michael Toms     Interview Date: 9/12/2006       Program Number: 3170