Hirshfield is unsurpassed in her ability to sink into a moment's essence and exchange something of herself with its finite music--and then, in seemingly simple, inevitable words, to deliver that exchange to us in poems that vibrate with form and expression perfectly united. Hirshfield's poems of discovery, acknowledgment of the difficult, and praise turn always toward deepening comprehension. Here we...

A dazzling collection of essays on how the best poems work, from the master poet and popular essayist
-Poetry, - Jane Hirshfield has said, -is language that foments revolutions of being.- In ten eloquent and highly original explorations, she unfolds some of the ways this is done--by the inclusion of hiddenness, paradox, and surprise; by a perennial awareness of the place of uncertainty in our lives; by language's own acts of discovery; by the powers of image, statement, music, and feeling to enlarge in every direction. Closely reading poems by Dickinson, Bashō, Szymborska,...