Product Description

An investigation into incarnation, transience, and our intimate connection with all existence, by one of the preeminent poets of her generation

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #255536 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-01
• Released on: 2007-02-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 112 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Serious, prayerful and governed by quietly sweeping abstract lines, Hirshfield's sixth collection of verse continues the meditative direction established in 2001's well-received Given Sugar, Given Salt. She subtitles many poems "an assay," meaning both a try and an exposition: the sky, the words "of " and "to" and the writings of Edgar Allan Poe all become such discursive test cases. Some assays are prose poems, a form that balances out Hirshfield's tropism toward restrained wonder. The tone overall, however, inclines decisively toward sadness and grief: the poet aspires "to live amid the great vanishing a cat must live,/ one shadow fully at ease inside another." Hirshfield brings a plainspoken American spirituality (think of Mary Oliver or Robert Bly) to bear on her interest in East Asian practice: a set of quite short (one to five lines) lyric efforts, under the collective title "Seventeen Pebbles," pares Hirshfield's sensibility to a Zen concision. A longer Japanese-influenced poem concludes, "slowness alone is not to be confused/ with the scent of the plum tree just before it opens." Clarification makes for consolation in this gentle and very unified book. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
"Enough is not enough when it comes to poetry." So said one of the most accomplished practicioners writing in English today, Seamus Heaney. For him, the power of the poem is achieved by running more voltage through the poetic device, by "over-languaging the language." What distinguishes this very specialized work from all the rest of written expression is that palpable sense of more. Or sometimes less. . . .

Despite a number of interesting experimental movements, the dominant mode in American poetry over the past quarter-century is a kind of secular plainsong that steers clear of rich musicality, complicated structures and that notion of superfluity. Perhaps the contemporary sensibility has been affected by how frequently we've seen bad ideas trotted out in elaborate intellectual clothing. From poetry to politics to pop culture, we've learned to be wary of the thorn tucked away inside the dramatic flourish, the manipulative impulse concealed by stylistic embellishment. In reaction, the governing poetic principles seem to be clarity and simplicity.

In the hands of a skilled writer, especially one who has committed years to observing and thinking about some small corner of existence -- poets such as Jack Gilbert, Mary Oliver and Louise Glück -- this poetry can achieve breathtaking effects that are all the more mystifying because, at first, we can find no apparent cause for this sudden in-rush of energy.

Very quietly, Jane Hirshfield has been producing work that is earning her a place in the pantheon of those modern masters of simplicity. The publication of her sixth volume of poetry, After, will only serve to broaden her audience and solidify that reputation.

Hirshfield is a practicing Buddhist who has made her home in northern California -- as did the venerable Gary Snyder before her. But her religious discipline is rarely an overt presence in her texts. Her poems are more in the spirit of the T'ang Dynasty masters such as Wang Wei, whose spiritual outlook was wholly ingrained in the simplest practices of daily life, a reflected light emanating from the landscape. By paring down the moment to its essential elements and allowing ephemeral thoughts to be anchored within the tangible things of the world, Hirshfield comes up with poems that brilliantly portray even mundane experiences as if they were nothing short of revelation.

Take the following short poem, which appears near the end of the new collection:

Red Scarf

The red scarf
still hangs over the chairback.
In its folds,
like a perfume
that cannot be quite remembered,
inconceivable before.

That the scarf "still" hangs over the chair makes us privy to a passage of time, a certain intimacy, the utter daily-ness of even the dearest relationships. Who laid it there, after a long day, intending to tidy up later when time allowed? And who voices the poem's two simple observations, all while leaving the depths of emotion unrevealed? Why can't she bring herself to put away the errant scarf, to restore the household to its proper order? That "inconceivable before" gradually solidifies in our consciousness until it becomes an irrevocable border; beyond it remain those old days of normality that, as is often the case, only convey how loved they were through their absence.

The elegiac spirit of the poem is quietly reinforced in even the smallest elements; and though the aural quality of the poem is subdued, listen to the interplay between the soft burr of the abundant r's set against the hard-edged limitation of the c's. Even before the mind comprehends, the ear responds to that muted tug-of-war between longing and the acceptance of loss.

The poet's approach is clearly at work in "After Long Silence," the collection's opening poem, bringing to bear, in equal measures, precise vision and rigorous thought; the result is a marvelous sense of spaciousness. As she stands alone in her kitchen at night, Hirshfield's words create a clearing where even the ordinary moment is capable of yielding a sense of life's momentousness (which the Buddhist terms "mindfulness" but the poet is too self-possessed to lecture us about). The poem concludes with two lines that set the benchmark for the work to come:

The untranslatable thought must be the most precise.
Yet words are not the end of thought, they are where it begins.

Even when tackling subjects of obvious emotional intensity -- the deathbed of a friend ("The Bell Zygmunt"), the challenges of a spiritual life ("Theology" and "Between the Material World and the World of Feeling") -- Hirshfield strives for that same equanimity and unswerving attention, envying "the blue-green curve of a vase's shoulder, which holds whatever is placed within it -- the living flower or the dead -- with an equally tender balance."

Of course, Hirshfield's thoroughly human poems can only steer toward that perfection: "I, who am made of you only," she says to and about her concept of the moment, "speak these words against your unmasterable instruction -- // A knife cannot cut itself open,/ yet you ask me both to be you and to know you" ("Instant Glimpsable Only for an Instant"). This metaphysical balancing act is where the poet has situated her writing. When the poems are less than enthralling, we find the balance has shifted dangerously toward the "knowing" rather than the "being" side of the scale, as in some of the "Assays" series -- deep investigations of the ordinary (like "Gravel," "Tears," and even those humble prepositions "Of," "To," and "And"). Yet even the least successful of them is still thoughtful, inventive, beautiful -- qualities many a lesser poet would bargain for in a heartbeat. And in the case of her best work, the poems are so open-hearted and marvelously conceived that they are not just beautiful themselves but effortlessly contain beauty -- much like her imagined blue-green vase. What's more, they make us suddenly aware of what we too contain at every savored moment of the day.

Reviewed by Steven Ratiner
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* A number of the finely measured and carefully weighted poems in Hirshfield's stirring new collection carry the subtitle "An Assay," meaning a trial or attempt, a study of characteristics, an analysis to determine the presence or absence of certain components. This is precisely what Hirshfield performs in poems constructed as cleverly and economically as riddles as she ponders the nature of hope, envy, certainty, and possibility. Intrigued with language's concealments and revelations, she has also crafted a series of provocative poems about how ordinary words--of, and, to, once--embody the workings of our minds. Keenly aware that there is much in the universe we're unable to detect and that we have little control over our fate, Hirshfield considers amplitude and chance in poems of exquisite restraint and meticulous reasoning, including a striking meditation on the paradoxical richness of spareness that can serve as her ars poetica. But these poems are not abstractions, they abound in earthly wonders: animals and leaves, rivers and snow, sky and rust. Hirshfield even calls her short poems "pebbles," and, indeed, they send ripples across the reflecting pool of our collective consciousness. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

The Awakening of Words
In Jane Hirshfield's sixth book of poetry entitled, "After," she is interested or invested in the use of words and their function in life and what they have to teach. The theme of this contemporary woman poet seems to dwell in her poem called "To Speech," "What lives in words is what words were needed to learn." After the poet has mastered the use of language, only then can it be manipulated into the truth. She is conscious of words associated with self awareness, namely: judgment, grief, theology, hope, articulation, possibility, speech, and she even grasps the concept of some of the most insignificant and magnificent words such as `to', `and', or `of.' It is important to mention the white space in between the words; Many of her words are short, concise, delicious, and function to be uttered and reclaimed. Among them include Hirshfield's first poem in her book, "After Long Silence" which seems to be a declaration of the very thing which she feels most important to convey to the reader of her poems: "The untranslatable thought must be the most precise/ Yet words are not the end of thought, they are where it begins."

Hirshfield's poetry is like a walk through the awakening of ignorance, you are not sure what to expect, but once you have completed your journey you are never the same. Along the way Hirshfield uses sounds, symbols, elegies, personifiers, metaphors, and assays to convey her thoughts. Maya Angelou, a great poet in her own right once said, "I've gone from being ignorant of being ignorant to being aware of being aware." Angelou and Hirshfield both require that the importance of being aware of words is one's own responsibility. Within the second to the last poem titled, "Letter to C," Hirshfield reminds the reader where the journey has taken them within her book of poems. In this poem there are references to the many symbols, sounds, and constructions uttered by the poet in her other poems; for example: Orpheus a tragic character which appears in her poem called "Flowering Vetch," the use of dogs which is a natural occurrence in more than half of her poems, Vilnius which is the title and subject of her poem "Vilnius," and Krakow which appears in her poem "Not Only Parallel Lines Extend to the Infinite." The poem "Letter to C," then functions to bring the reader from the beginning to the end of her book of poems.

Through Hirshfield's careful metaphor, the self "...carries grief as a pack mule carries the side bags, being careful between the trees to leave extra room." Hirshfield's title, "After," becomes for the reader a kind of afterthought. After Hirshfield takes the reader through the many isolated incidences of which live is based one thing remains, "Your story was this: you were happy, then you were sad, you slept, you awakened." I would take her utterance a step further and say that "you awakened," to find yourself. Anyone who has the chance to read her poetry should not fail at the opportunity. Hirshfield style of writing poetry is accessible to anyone who wants to enter her world and unpack her words.

Words on Words.
These poems are astounding. Jane Hirshfield is succinct, I could hear the words slicing off her pen and onto the paper. She doesn't waste breath. If her poetry were to be labelled in Taoist terms it would be the Philosophical School of Tao, using her energy in the most efficient ways she can think or dream up. I read these with my head tilted and my mouth agape, she dissects language so thoroughly and with such compassion that the words and letters practically take on human qualities. I didn't put this book down until I was finished. You won't either.

Where the poem ends ...
I have anticipated the release of Jane's latest work as she had read some of the poems at her workshops at the Tassajara Zen Center. I am not disappointed.

The last line in the opening poem summarizes and also hints at the poetry to follow. "Yet words are not the end of thought, they are where it begins."

And Jane, in a recent reading, admitted that these poems do leave lines unended, thoughts unfinished.

And for this reader, that is a good reason to return to certain poems; to begin again, to see anew.

Michael
Santa Cruz, CA