Latest Edward Hirsch Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• I think fiction goes to poetry for the intensity of its use of language.

  Edward Hirsch

  Thinking, Fiction, Use

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com.

• Fiction writers learn about the development of metaphor, the use of rhythm, the way that language is compacted in order to express the feelings of - express their own feelings and the feelings of their characters.

  Edward Hirsch

  Character, Order, Feelings

  "Poets v. Prose Writers". Big Think interview, bigthink.com.

• I think the deepest thing is that many fiction writers tell stories but are not elegant writers. But, we're not writing journalism when we're making literature.

  Edward Hirsch

  Writing, Thinking, Fiction

  "Poets v. Prose Writers". Big Think interview, bigthink.com.

• We're trying to make something that lasts in language and there's no question that many fiction writers began as poets and it's hard for me to think of any good fiction writers who don't also read poetry.

  Edward Hirsch

  Thinking, Trying, Fiction

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. February 4, 2010.

• I think it's true that that's something that poetry can go to school on fiction. I think poetry can go to fiction to learn.

  Edward Hirsch

  School, Thinking, Fiction

  Big Think interview, bigthink.com.

• The poets needed to learn to pay greater attention to character and to narrative.

  Edward Hirsch

  Character, Attention, Narrative

  Source: bigthink.com

• That is many poets don't know how to tell a story and they don't have a sense of how to put things in order to tell a story and we thought the poets could learn from fiction writers something about developing a character over time who wasn't just you and also creating a narrative structure.

  Edward Hirsch

  Character, Order, Narrative Structure

  Big Think interview, bigthink.com.

• 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. And the reason for that is because the fiction writers seemed to need to learn how to pay greater attention to language itself, to the way that language works.

  Edward Hirsch

  Writing, Creative, Taught

  Big Think interview, bigthink.com.

• You can seek clarity, you can seek warmth, you can try to make something for lasting. You can pack something in salt so that it's well made and you can hope that it outlasts time. But, ultimately that's not up to you.

  Edward Hirsch

  Trying, Up To You, Salt

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com.

• Ultimately you're trying to reach across and find some other person, some other human warmth. But it is, especially in written poetry, it is inscribed in a text and the text can't do that work by itself and you as a poet can only do your best.

  Edward Hirsch

  Trying, Poet, Humans

  "How to Read a Poem". Big Think interview, bigthink.com.

• I think that's a connection that you can only hope for. It's not something that you can make because it needs someone else.

  Edward Hirsch

  Thinking, Connections, Needs

  "How to Read a Poem". Big Think interview, bigthink.com.

• In American tradition a certain kind of, I would say, desperate American friendliness in which the poet tries to reach out through the page to make a connection by the side of the road with some other person.

  Edward Hirsch

  Trying, Connections, Pages

  "How to Read a Poem". Big Think interview, bigthink.com.

• My focus is on the reader and that the poet's job is not to inspire himself or herself. The poet's job is to inspire some future reader. And so, as a reader you have a task to do in finding those bottles and opening up the messages and experiencing what's in them inside of yourself.

  Edward Hirsch

  Jobs, Opening Up, Focus

  Big Think interview, bigthink.com.

• And Mandelstam says a poet - you go down to the shore and you see an unlikely looking from a bottle from the past, you open it. Mandelstam says, "It's okay to do so. I'm not reading someone else's mail. It was addressed to whoever found it. I found it, therefore it's addressed to me."

  Edward Hirsch

  Reading, Past, Bottles

  "How to Read a Poem". Big Think interview, bigthink.com.

• When you find it you become the secret addressee of a literary text and I felt that their reader had been left out of this experience of reading poetry or what the experience of poetry was.

  Edward Hirsch

  Reading, Secret, Reader

  "How to Read a Poem". Big Think interview, bigthink.com.

• The idea of a poem as a message in a bottle means that it's sent out towards some future reader and the reader who opens that bottle becomes the addressee of the literary text.

  Edward Hirsch

  Mean, Ideas, Bottles

  "How to Read a Poem". Big Think interview, bigthink.com.

• The great post-Holocaust poet, Paul Celan, said that a poem is a message in a bottle sent out in the not always greatly hopeful belief that somewhere and some time it would wash up on land on heartland perhaps.

  Edward Hirsch

  Land, Hopeful, Holocaust

  "How to Read a Poem". Big Think interview, bigthink.com.

• Readers bring their own experiences, their own range of - their own wisdom, their own knowledge, their own insights to poem and the meaning of a poem takes place in the negotiation between the poet, the poem and the reader.

  Edward Hirsch

  Poet, Negotiation, Range

  Source: bigthink.com

• As a reader you have a task to do, you have something to do. You bring your experience to it. It's not all inherit in the poem.

  Edward Hirsch

  Tasks, Reader

  "How to Read a Poem". Big Think interview, bigthink.com.

• I don't think you can read poetry while you're watching television very well.

  Edward Hirsch

  Thinking, Television, Wells

  Big Think interview, bigthink.com.

• The idea of how to read a poem is based on the idea that poetry needs you as a reader. That the experience of poetry, the meaning in poetry is a kind of circuit that takes place between a poet, a poem and a reader and that meaning doesn't exist or in here in poems alone.

  Edward Hirsch

  Ideas, Needs, Kind

  "How to Read a Poem". Big Think interview, bigthink.com.

• Emily Dickinson calls previous poets her kinsmen of the shelf. You can always be consoled by your kinsmen of the shelf and you can participate in poetry by going to them and by trying to make something worthy of them.

  Edward Hirsch

  Trying, Poet, Shelves

  Source: bigthink.com

• Gertrude Stein said, "I write for myself and strangers." I would say I write for myself, strangers and the great dead.

  Edward Hirsch

  Writing, Gertrude, Stranger

  Source: bigthink.com

• I think that as long as you have other poets before you and that you can learn from them, then it's always open ended for you.

  Edward Hirsch

  Thinking, Long, Poet

  "Do MFA Programs Hurt Poetry?". Big Think interview, bigthink.com.

• There's always some place to go. You don't need workshops, you don't need friends necessarily, you can be befriended by literature itself.

  Edward Hirsch

  Needs, Literature, Places To Go

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. February 4, 2010.