Edward Hirsch Quotes

Poetry is a form of necessary speech.

I was never able to pray
but let me inscribe my name
in the book of waves.

For most of history poetry has been an oral art, it retains the vestiges of orality, an experience embedded in the sensuality of sounds.

The line is a way of thinking in poetry, by poetry..it paces the poem.

The poem is an original and unique creation, but it is reading and recitation: participation.

Inspiration is inbreathing, indwelling, poetry can never be entirely willed. It may be true a poet is given only a single line but that line is a gift from the unconscious, intution , a perception.

Poetry is a voicing, a calling forth, words waiting to be vocalized.

There is no true poetry unconcious inspiration.

The poem is an act beyond paraphrase because what is being said is always inseparable from the way it is being said.

The poet creates it; the people by recitation recreate it. Poet and reader (hearer) are moments of the same reality.

These ruinous days of Autumn.At dusk,
the brightness seeps through the crumbling air,
at dusk the air gathers up the brightness