After: Poems by Jane Hirshfield

From the Publisher

An investigation into incarnation, transience, and our intimate connection with all existence, by one of the preeminent poets of her generation

Publishers Weekly

Serious, prayerful and governed by quietly sweeping abstract lines, Hirshfield's sixth collection of verse continues the meditative direction established in 2001's well-received Given Sugar, Given Salt. She subtitles many poems "an assay," meaning both a try and an exposition: the sky, the words "of " and "to" and the writings of Edgar Allan Poe all become such discursive test cases. Some assays are prose poems, a form that balances out Hirshfield's tropism toward restrained wonder. The tone overall, however, inclines decisively toward sadness and grief: the poet aspires "to live amid the great vanishing a cat must live,/ one shadow fully at ease inside another." Hirshfield brings a plainspoken American spirituality (think of Mary Oliver or Robert Bly) to bear on her interest in East Asian practice: a set of quite short (one to five lines) lyric efforts, under the collective title "Seventeen Pebbles," pares Hirshfield's sensibility to a Zen concision. A longer Japanese-influenced poem concludes, "slowness alone is not to be confused/ with the scent of the plum tree just before it opens." Clarification makes for consolation in this gentle and very unified book. (Feb.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

The conversational yet metaphysical poems in Hirshfield's (Given Sugar, Given Salt) sixth collection look at everyday circumstances through a foreshortened lens. Images of flowers, fruits, stones, wolves, beetles, fireflies, paintings, and dogs-most of these poems mention dogs-all represent elusive emotional states. In "Lemons," e.g., Hirshfield uses grated lemon rind bitters to suggest the moment when one lover knows that his feelings are not reciprocated. The best poems are spare meditations on life's disappointments. They usually begin in the middle of things, letting the context accrue gradually until they end in mystery, as in "Seventeen Pebbles," a series of 17 poems each resembling haiku. One could easily become heavy-handed and maudlin with these subjects-many of the poems feel as though they were written at the end of a love affair. But Hirshfield, whose work has appeared in Best American Poetry, Pushcart Prize Anthology, the Atlantic Monthly, the Nation, and The New Yorker, manages to avoid just that with vivid imagery, understatement, and a tone that is emotionally distant but not removed. Her poetic voice-although distinctly her own-faintly echoes the work of Louise Gluck and Robert Haas. Suitable for all libraries.-Diane Scharper, Towson Univ., MD Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

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After

HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Politeness fades,

a small anchovy gleam
leaving the upturned pot in the dish rack
after the moon has wandered out of the window.

One of the late freedoms, there in the dark.
The leftover soup put away as well.

Distinctions matter. Whether a goat's
quiet face should be called noble
or indifferent. The difference between a right rigor and pride.

The untranslatable thought must be the most precise.

Yet words are not the end of thought, they are where it begins.

Continues...

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