American - Poet | January 20, 1950 -
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.
Edward Hirsch
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There are still many tribal cultures where poetry and song, there is just one word for them. There are other cultures with literacy where poetry and song are distinguished. But poetry always remembers that it has its origins in music.
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The sense of flowing, which is so crucial to song, is also crucial to poetry.
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When poetry separates from song, then the words have to carry all the rhythm themselves; they have to do all the work. They can't rely on the singing voice.
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It's very important to me to be an American poet, a Jewish poet, a poet who came of age in the 1960s.
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My cultural experiences were as important to my formation as many of the other things that happened to me.
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There are a lot of poems where I am questing for God. I don't think there is any finding of God.
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Each book should be an entity unto itself, with its own structure, character, life, name.
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I still feel that I'm capable of being as emotionally present as when I was young.
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I believe in rooting poems in actual places, even if you move into some other extraordinary realm.
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I started writing poetry as a teenager in suburban Chicago out of emotional desperation.
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I grew up in a middle-class house without books, without art. No one around me wrote poetry or even read it.
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