How to Read a Poem

Theme:

How to Read a Poem by Edward Hirsch is an unprecedented exploration of poetry and feeling. He describes why poetry matters and how we can open up our imaginations so that its message can make a difference. Poetry needs readers. Readers need Edward Hirsch who joyfully shares his passion for poetry and his enthusiasm gives his words a lively energy.

Famous Quotes:

“The poet would befriend and comfort himself, if only he could.”

“The poet of Whit-manesque ambitions must find a way to present something that has as its sole purpose taking things away.”

“Poetry is a voicing, a calling forth, and the lyric poem exists somewhere in the region—the register—between speech and song.”

“Poetry is a form of necessary speech.”

“despite catastrophes that defy the imagination, daily life goes on, forgetfulness seems to conquer memory, the world keeps mysteriously renewing itself.”

“These poems have come from a great distance to find you. I think of Malebranche’s maxim, “Attentiveness is the natural prayer of the soul.”

“We can only understand what we can name.”

“Every poem is shadowed by desire, but it is also shadowed by the problem of rendering desire in language. There is a place where similitude seems to break down because experience itself seems beyond compare.”

“am born a poet, of a low class without doubt yet a poet. This is my nature and vocation”),”

“She herself feels unequal to the world’s sufferings and fears that by narrowing her focus on the world to make it manageable, she has trivialized it.”

“There is so much Everything that Nothing is hidden quite nicely.   Eventually,”

“Cicero said that even if his lifetime were to be doubled he would still not have time to waste on reading the lyric poets.”

“I don’t think that we should underestimate the capacity of tenderness that poetry opens within us.”

“There is an enormous abyss between subject and object.”