Quotes from Edward Hirsch

It's hard to think that say Shakespeare could have written "The Tempest" when he was young. It seems to be reflective work or retrospective work.

One of the things that happens to everyone who is grief-stricken, who has lost someone, is there comes a time when everyone else just wants you to get over it, but of course you don't get over it. You get stronger; you try and live on; you endure; you change; but you don't get over it. You carry it with you.

Works of art imitate and provoke other works of art, the process is the source of art itself.

I grew up in a middle-class house without books, without art. No one around me wrote poetry or even read it.

The line is a way of framing poetry. All verse is measured by lines. The poetic line immediately announces its difference from everyday speech and prose.

Sometimes the title comes to you at the beginning, sometimes it comes at the end. The very best way in my experience is when it comes in the middle.

I'm so happy to be an advocate for poetry.

There have always been great defenses of poetry, and I've tried to write mine, and I think all of my work and criticism is a defense of poetry to try and keep something alive in poetry.

I started writing poetry as a teenager in suburban Chicago out of emotional desperation.

Writing poetry is such an intense experience that it helps to start the process in a casual or wayward frame of mind.