Jane Hirshfield Quotes

One breath taken completely; one poem, fully written, fully read - in such a moment, anything can happen.

as some strings, untouched,
sound when no one is speaking.

So it was when love slipped inside us.

Poetry's work is the clarification and magnification of being.

One way poetry connects is across time. . . . Some echo of a writer's physical experience comes into us when we read her poem.

The heart's actions
are neither the sentence nor its reprieve.

Salt hay and thistles, above the cold granite.
One bird singing back to another because it can't not.

Poetry's task is to increase the available stock of reality, R P Blackmur said.

Tree

It is foolish
to let a young redwood
grow next to a house.

Even in this
one lifetime,
you will have to choose.

That great calm being,
this clutter of soup pots and books-

Already the first branch-tips brush at the window.
Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.

How fragile we are, between the few good moments.