Jane Hirshfield

Some words from Jane…

The greatest human joy is to lead a known life, and an interconnected life. To know what we are, within the self and in relationship to the rest of being, is to be enlarged. Poetry, and the attentiveness that comes with reading or writing it, brings that knowledge to availability to me.

Whatever is going on for us, if we can experience it fully, without reservation—that is not only information, but a kind of happiness. Writing for me is immersion in this moment’s deep matter, whatever it is. It may be that the “happiness” of deep grief does not, while it is going on, feel very good—but it’s part of any fully lived existence. The ability to keep and develop attentiveness in the face of whatever is going on—turmoil or boredom, happiness or terror—seems to me the greatest part of becoming fully human.

…from Poetry Daily/The San Diego Reader, in Conversation with Judith Moore

Photo: Mark Moffett by permission of author

Jane Hirshfield, in her wise way has said, “My primary interest has always been the attempt to understand and deepen experience by bringing it into words. Poetry, for me, is an instrument of investigation and a mode of perception, a way of knowing and feeling both self and world.”

Jane Hirshfield’s sixth poetry collection, After, was named a “best book of 2006″ by The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, and England’s Financial Times. Her seventh, Come, Thief, will be published by Knopf this September. Her awards include fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Academy of American Poets, as well as six appearances in The Best American Poetry, and numerous other honors.

A practitioner of Soto Zen since 1974, she reads and teaches widely, including in 2011 appearances in Japan, Canada, Poland, and China, as well as many places in the United States. She’s been featured in two Bill Moyers public television specials, her poems have been read frequently by Garrison Keillor on his Writers Almanac program, and she appeared prominently in the 2010 PBS documentary, The Buddha.

Thank you, Jane for your kindness and generosity in offering permission.