The WELL: inkwell.vue.266: Jane Hirshfield, "After"

#103: Tiffany Lee Brown (magdalen) Mon 13 Mar 06 13:02

Mon, 13 Mar 2006 13:02:00 PST

y'all rock! thank you, jane. [Read entire topic]

#102: Gail Williams (gail) Wed 8 Mar 06 15:54

Wed, 08 Mar 2006 15:54:00 PST

It was a great experience indeed. [Read entire topic]

#101: Joe Flower (bbear) Wed 8 Mar 06 14:14

Wed, 08 Mar 2006 14:14:00 PST

I want to thank Jane for her graceful and thoughtful participation here, as she departs on her book tour. This interview brought out a number of provocative insights both from Jane and the other participants. Thank you all. [Read entire topic]

#100: Teleological dyslexic (ceder) Tue 7 Mar 06 23:06

Tue, 07 Mar 2006 23:06:00 PST

I have loved reading this beautiful gem--school takes soo much time; thank you all. sorry I didn't participate--just in my head but maybe noone heard. ;-) [Read entire topic]

#99: Sharon Brogan (sbmontana) Tue 7 Mar 06 15:23

Tue, 07 Mar 2006 15:23:00 PST

Oh, I just can't believe two weeks have passed already! Each day, this has been a special time that I've saved for myself, to come and savor. Thank you so much! [Read entire topic]

#98: Susanna Laaksonen (sussu-nen) Tue 7 Mar 06 10:54

Tue, 07 Mar 2006 10:54:00 PST

This topic has been a great gift (even partially speed-read on a hotel sofa in Maui, after a surf lesson, with a headful of sand and water...)

Thank you for your many gifts to us, Jane, and thank you everyone in this topic for wise, interesting, insightful, delightful posts and questions. And thank you Joe for getting this gift-topic to such a nice start.

Several times after reading this topic I have gone straight to writing something, and I like reading what I have written in that way. It's tremendous. [Read entire topic]

#97: www.billcostley.blog-city.com (billcostley) Tue 7 Mar 06 09:56

Tue, 07 Mar 2006 09:56:00 PST

Jane, I honestly think the definition of poetic 'gold' changes with the decades, eras, centuries. Few people now find Alexander Pope 'golden' (tho Byron did), but almost all do Shakespeare, Donne, The English Metaphysicals. I've often said that the post-WW2 generation's early exposure to haiki (in translation) set a core-std. that didn't previously exist; from that comes a belief in living poetic 'cores' rather than formal superstructures. Result: You don't hear anybody saying how great Longfellow is anymore; but I do expect Robert Browning's dramatic-monologues (=Victorian slam-poetry) to become popular again. [Read entire topic]

#96: Steve Bjerklie (stevebj) Tue 7 Mar 06 09:42

Tue, 07 Mar 2006 09:42:00 PST

"Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and my memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise...

"I am haunted by waters." [Read entire topic]

#95: Jane Hirshfield (jh) Tue 7 Mar 06 09:10

Tue, 07 Mar 2006 09:10:00 PST

To answer sussu--I think you are exactly right in your description, as was Tiffany. There are a very few poems which are narratives in which someone who knew the facts of my life could see those facts told directly--"1973" is one, and "Talc." But my work never looks like Sharon Olds, or Dorianne Laux (both poets whose work I love), and though I'm sometimes compared to her in reviews, I think it doesn't look like Louise Gluck either (another poet I love). I also love Robert Lowell's nakedness, his direct statements of self in the world. I have one poem that I think makes a statement much like his, a genuine confession, and my sense of privacy inclines me to not name that poem here.

The exposures feel present to me, but it's as I said earlier: the x-ray or CAT scan or MRI rather than the nude portrait. None of us would recognize one another from our x-rays, our MRIs, yet that level is also the way we live in this world. It's perhaps easiest to see in the poems of "The Lives of the Heart." So many emerge from times of great difficulty and undoing, and are records of attempts to live through and answer that undoing. But the grammar is "the heart," not "my heart." And as you say, sussu, it's not that I think one aesthetic is better than the other. It is what's possible for me, and what makes a path for me, what is cure and liberation. There are many doorways to enter suffering and joy. And in poetry "I" can mean "I" or it can mean "you," or it can mean "he" or "she." And the same in the other direction--everything said in a poem, every description, is a statement of the state of the soul, and of the speaker. Japanese poetry threw open its doors and windows for me when I first began to understand that, the relationship of objective and subjective. The cloak is always transparent.

To those of you who've been saying "thank you"--you are very welcome. Thanks also to the hosts of Inkwell, to Joe for starting this conversation, to each of you who've been reading and each of you who've made a comment or kept the conversation going with a question. I would never do this kind of thinking or speaking if left on my own, only write poems--all the essays of Nine Gates were written because I was asked to give a talk, and all these thoughts come only because a conversation fishes them out of me. Thanks for coming and fishing. [Read entire topic]

#94: therese (therese) Tue 7 Mar 06 08:36

Tue, 07 Mar 2006 08:36:00 PST

Jane, thanks for your generous responses, and the pure gold (leather, sand...) of your poetry. [Read entire topic]