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by: Edward Hirsch
List Price: $30.00Amazon.com's Price: $24.00 You Save: $6.00 (20%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 808.1
EAN: 9780151004195
ISBN: 0151004196
Label: Harcourt
Manufacturer: Harcourt
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 288
Publication Date: March 22, 1999
Publisher: Harcourt
Sales Rank: 765429
Studio: Harcourt
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
Read a poem to yourself in the middle of the night. Turn on a single lamp and read it while you're alone in an otherwise dark room or while someone sleeps next to you. Say it over to yourself in a place where silence reigns and the din of culture-the constant buzzing noise that surrounds you-has momentarily stopped. This poem has come from a great distance to find you.' So begins this astonishing book by one of our leading poets and critics. In an unprecedented exploration of the genre, Hirsch writes about what poetry is, why it matters, and how we can open up our imaginations so that its message-which is of vital importance in day-to-day life-can reach us and make a difference. For Hirsch, poetry is not just a part of life, it is life, and expresses like no other art our most sublime emotions. In a marvelous reading of world poetry, including verse by such poets as Wallace Stevens, Elizabeth Bishop, Pablo Neruda, William Wordsworth, Sylvia Plath, Charles Baudelaire, and many more, Hirsch discovers the meaning of their words and ideas and brings their sublime message home into our hearts. A masterful work by a master poet, this brilliant summation of poetry and human nature will speak to all readers who long to place poetry in their lives but don't know how to read it.
Amazon.com Review:
Edward Hirsch's primer may very well inspire readers to catch the next flight for Houston and sign up for any and all of his courses. Not for nothing does this attentive and adoring poet-teacher title his book How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry; Hirsch's big guide to getting the most out of this form is packed with inspiring examples and thousands of epigrams and allusions. Above all, he is intent on poetry's physical and emotional power. In chapters devoted to the lyric, the narrative, the poetry of sorrow, of ecstasy, of witness, Hirsch continually conveys the sheer ecstasy of this vital act of communication. (He takes us, for instance, with great care and mounting excitement, through Emily Brontë's 'Spellbound,' which he discovered at age 8 when 'baseball season was over for the year.') Above all, there is the thrill of discovery as Hirsch offers up works by artists ranging from Anna Akhmatova to Walt Whitman, Elizabeth Bishop to Adam Zagajewski, and everyone in between. I defy you not to fall in love with Wislawa Szymborska on the basis of 'The Joy of Writing,' which begins: Why does this written doe bound through these written woods?
For a drink of written water from a spring
whose surface will xerox her soft muzzle?
Why does she lift her head; does she hear something?
Perched on four slim legs borrowed from the truth,
she pricks up her ears beneath my fingertips. Elsewhere, Hirsch's section on Sterling Brown's redefinitions of African American work songs should put this neglected poet back on the map. And his introductions to Eastern European poets such as Jirí Orten, Attila József, and Miklós Radnóti will make you want to ferret out their hard-to-find work. (Perhaps his publisher should put out a companion anthology...)
Hirsch manages to cram entire worlds and lives into 258 pages of text (which he follows up with a huge glossary and extended reading list). His two paragraphs on Juan Gelman, whose son was murdered and pregnant daughter-in-law disappeared during Argentina's 'Dirty War,' bring this man's art into clear, tragic focus. But even here, the compulsively generous author is compelled to enshrine the words of other critics, foregrounding Eduardo Galeano and Julio Cortázar, who describes Gelman's art as 'a permanent caress of words on unknown tombs.' What a pleasure it is to be inside Hirsch's head! He seems to have read everything and absorbed most of it, and he wears his considerable scholarship lightly. Many of his fellow poets have suffered for their art, have been imprisoned and killed--but above all, Hirsch makes us realize that, no matter what the artist's circumstances, subject, or theme, 'the stakes are always high' in this game that writer and reader alike must keep playing. --Kerry Fried
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Not Necessarily for a Beginning Reader of Poetry But Still a Good Resource
While this book has a very academic tone, it is also obvious that the author has a genuine passion for poetry. His goal with this book, it seems, was to help others learn about poetry from the poems themselves. Each chapter (or article) presents a group of poems around a certain topic (theme) that the author hopes will help the reader to better grasp the world of poetry. Hirsch is acutely aware of what a partner the reader of poetry is to the poem.
The first few chapters are the most ... Read More
Rating: - Bought for Poetry writing course
Bought for poetry writing course, was helful but slow read.
Rating:  - Like an old glove, it gets better with age...
I tend to think of this book as I do my seasoned, battered first baseman's mitt, which accompanied me through eight seasons of championship Senior Mens' Hardball in the Northwest.
As I grow older, I become more appreciative of Ed Hirsch's spiritual gift. It is no small feat to mentor well, especially in a field as suspicious as poetry, but Hirsch manages quite well, with no lies and no breaking of hands, with no disillusion or politicking. By sharing his passion and speaking honestly and ... Read More
Rating: - What goes out from the heart enters the heart
There is a Jewish teaching, that something said from the heart enters the heart. Hirsch's love of poetry is the dominant theme here, an enthusiasm he teaches in every line he writes. He cites Rilke as saying that poetry should be an ' experience' something felt and sensed directly. And poetry is clearly that for Hirsch.
Those of us who have read poetry all our lives, and found in it a special gift and power, a special consolation and source of strength know and understand the kind of ' love' Hirsch ... Read More
Rating:  - But... How to Read a Poem?
Edward Hirsch has written a meticulous analysis of the art of poetry, imbued with an authentic love of the form. From page to page he dissects and interprets; his enthusiasm remains high throughout. Not just the poetry, but also the poets themselves are lavished with heroic praise, their craft transcending the mortal. Their words are golden strands of virtue more appropriately whispered into the ears of gods.
But, but...
For those of us uneducated in the art of poetry there is a much ... Read More
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