Jane Hirshfield: New Poems | 2010

Photo by Curt Richter Jane Hirshfield was born in New York City and graduated from Princeton University in 1973. She studied Zen for nearly eight years at the San Francisco Zen Center, and has taught at UC Berkeley, Duke University, and Bennington College. She is the author of six books of poetry, as well as the influential prose collection Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry. She has also translated and edited the works of early women poets in The Ink Dark Moon: Poems by Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu and other books. Hirshfield has said "I am interested in poems that find a clarity without simplicity; in a way of thinking and speaking that does not exclude complexity but also does not obscure; in poems that know the world in many ways at once– heart, mind, voice, and body."
In this recording from the 2010 Key West Literary Seminar, January 10, Hirshfield begins with "The Poet," from her 1997 collection Lives of the Heart. The remaining poems are all new and uncollected, including "First Light Edging Cirrus," "French Horn," "The Supple Deer," "Alzheimer's," "Left-handed Sugar," "Vinegar and Oil," "Sonoma Fire," "A Day is Vast," "One Loss Folds Itself Inside Another," and "A Hand is Shaped for What it Holds or Makes."
From KWLS 2010: Clearing the Sill of the World
(16:09) / 8 MB
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This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2010 Jane Hirshfield. Used with generous permission from Jane Hirshfield.
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Each January, we explore a different literary theme through lectures, panel presentations, readings, informal gatherings, and discussions. In January 2011, we explore food in literature with our 29th annual Seminar, THE HUNGRY MUSE.
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