Edward Hirsch
Poet
1950-01-20
Quotes by Edward Hirsch
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If you had told me, though, when I was twenty-four that I would write about Skokie, Illinois, where I grew up, I would have said, —You're out of your mind. Why would I have Skokie in a poem?' But you become resigned. Your job is to write about the life you actually have.
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I did not know the work of mourningIs like carrying a bag of cementUp a mountain at nightThe mountaintop is not in sightBecause there is no mountaintopPoor Sisyphus griefI did not know I would struggleThrough a ragged underbrushWithout an upward path...Look closely and you will seeAlmost everyone carrying bagsOf cement on their shouldersThat's why it takes courageTo get out of bed in the morningAnd climb into the day.
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Works of art imitate and provoke other works of art, the process is the source of art itself.
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If you had told me, though, when I was twenty-four that I would write about Skokie, Illinois, where I grew up, I would have said, —You're out of your mind. Why would I have Skokie in a poem?' But you become resigned. Your job is to write about the life you actually have.
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I did not know the work of mourningIs like carrying a bag of cementUp a mountain at nightThe mountaintop is not in sightBecause there is no mountaintopPoor Sisyphus griefI did not know I would struggleThrough a ragged underbrushWithout an upward path...Look closely and you will seeAlmost everyone carrying bagsOf cement on their shouldersThat's why it takes courageTo get out of bed in the morningAnd climb into the day.
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Works of art imitate and provoke other works of art, the process is the source of art itself.
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Daydreaming is one of the key sources of poetry - a poem often starts as a daydream that finds its way into language - and walking seems to bring a different sort of alertness, an associative kind of thinking, a drifting state of mind.
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'Liberty Brass' is a small machine that unfolds in a single unpunctuated wave, which is interrupted by the rotating sign, the refrain. Each part is meant to do its work in relentless progression.
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Throughout his work, Philip Levine's most powerful commitment has been to the failed and lost, the marginal, the unloved, the unwanted.
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A novel takes place over time. It's a historical narrative, and it needs to have a series of peaks and valleys and the move through. You can't just start at the highest pitch and stay there, but you can in a lyric poem.
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I don't think you can read poetry while you're watching television very well.
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When I taught at the University of Houston in the Creative Writing program, we required the poets to take workshops in fiction writing, and we required the fiction writers to take workshops in poetry.
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