Jane Hirshfield

Biography

Jane Hirshfield is the author of six collections of poetry, including After (HarperCollins, 2006) and Given Sugar, Given Salt (HarperCollins, 2001), finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is also the author of the essay collection Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry (HarperCollins, 1997).

See Work

ESSAYS / Winter 2008

Justice: Four Windows

By Jane Hirshfield
1. Evolution and Justice

The mineral world stands apart from the axis of justice. A mountain rises and erodes, sandstones form and harden, granite decomposes to gruss, rivers change course without the possibility of outrage or protest. What...

POETRY / Spring 2006

A Moment Travels the Visible Fraction at Dusk and Is Gone

By Jane Hirshfield

A few times in a life—any life—
a moment comes, a decision comes,
and then the essential thing happens or it does not.

ESSAYS / Spring 2005

Section 26 of “Song of Myself” and Whitman’s Listening

By Jane Hirshfield

Whitman is a poet of all the senses, but listening, it seems, engaged him with special force: many of his work’s best-known passages set down what had come to him through the ear. No gesture of style so pronounced can be accidental, and I...