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After: Poems
by
Jane Hirshfield (Goodreads Author)
An investigation into incarnation, transience, and our intimate connection with all existence, by one of the preeminent poets of her generation
ebook, 112 pages
Published
May 4th 2010
by HarperCollins e-books
(first published February 7th 2006)
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Few poetry titles are as companionable as this one. When I need to write, to journal, to have an important talk with someone or to relax on my own, it's always good to have Hirshfield around. These are poems as spare in their style as they are capacious in meaning and compassion.
A theme Hirshfield particularly does well - and which buttresses her mindful, meditative aura - is that all of us are doing the best we can, yet can always take a step back, look at ourselves, and do better. If it happen...more
A theme Hirshfield particularly does well - and which buttresses her mindful, meditative aura - is that all of us are doing the best we can, yet can always take a step back, look at ourselves, and do better. If it happen...more
Recently I went to the Royal Festival Hall, London to hear Jane Hirshfield read on the last stop of her tour of the UK. I've been dipping into her poetry for the last year or so but this was the first time I've fully engaged with her work. The only way to describe her is luminous. She read standing in front of a huge window with view of the London Eye and Houses of Parliament behind her and as the evening progressed storm clouds crossed the sky behind her although the sun continued to shine in t...more
A book I will have to return to because of its largeness in themes, in ideas, in perception, in deceptively simple descriptions. I was particularly drawn to the many "assays" and the resonance of this word: trying to determine the presence, absence, or quantity of one or more components. This puts me in mind of negative capability as well as how grief, one haunted "after," feels and splits open. I was also impressed by the intimacy of the Buddhism here; this clear, precise thinker/seer is embedd...more
Jane Hirshfield, After (Harper Collins, 2006)
Jane Hirshfield's Given Sugar, Given Salt, which I read in January, is on my list of the best books I read in 2008. While After didn't have quite the effect on me her previous book did, this one is still capable of packing the wallop that makes Jane Hirshfield's poems so well worth your time;
“As Issa changed, writing after the death of his daughter,
This world of dew
is a world of dew.
And yet.
How much of you
was left uninvited into those lines.
That silen...more
Jane Hirshfield's Given Sugar, Given Salt, which I read in January, is on my list of the best books I read in 2008. While After didn't have quite the effect on me her previous book did, this one is still capable of packing the wallop that makes Jane Hirshfield's poems so well worth your time;
“As Issa changed, writing after the death of his daughter,
This world of dew
is a world of dew.
And yet.
How much of you
was left uninvited into those lines.
That silen...more
Nov 21, 2009
Kasey
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
poetry,
all-time-favorites
She's one of my two or three most favorite contemporary poets, and it's always so hard to choose which of her books I love best: this one, and The Lives of the Heart, and Given Sugar, Given Salt, and The October Palace... I guess, really, all of them. I love the largeness of her concerns--intimacy, impermanence--the beauty and strangeness of her voice, her compassion and her deep wisdom. Her Buddhist practice is definitely present in her work, but it doesn't intrude.
This is a beautiful collection of poems that I just can't seem to stop turning to. I'll open it at random, start reading, and inevitably find myself moved (Envy: An Assay) or amused (Termites: An Assay). The highlight, for me, is the Haiku-esque Seventeen Pebbles (I just realised the connection there ...) which is a perfect sub-collection of writings. So overall, this is a book that's going to stay with me for a very long time.
I don't go in for poetry. Really. While experiencing something of it's (possible) transcendence in college (with Pushkin mainly - hey, I was a Russian major - don't forget), since then, my occasional attempts to enjoy poetry were unsuccessful. And then...
I met the author of this book through a friend in San Francisco, and liked her so much, I immediately went out and grabbed her latest book. I was reading this book shortly after the loss of my beloved canine companion (Malkie), and her poem "Re...more
I met the author of this book through a friend in San Francisco, and liked her so much, I immediately went out and grabbed her latest book. I was reading this book shortly after the loss of my beloved canine companion (Malkie), and her poem "Re...more
Favorite poems: "The Double", "Not Only Parallel Lines Extend to the Infinite", "I Imagine Myself in Time", "The Meeting", "Wanting More and More to Live Unobserved, Unobserving", "Seventeen Pebbles- Global Warming, Sentence", "One Grain of Sand Among the Others in Winter Wind", "Bad Year", "In a Room With Five People, Six Griefs", "The Bell Zygmunt", "It Was Like This: You Were Happy"
Hirshfield's poems are a difficult thing to discribe. They do not have an immediate payoff. You don't read her poems, savoring every line, reading them aloud, rereading to yourself, line by exquisite line. You don't close the volume and feel fed. You don't close your eyes, heart racing, and think, "Yes. Brilliant." (dramatization. I never do this anyway, even when I should.) These poems are much slipperier than that. They haunt you. They stick in your head for days so that you look up at work tr...more
Equally potent in terms of its intellectual and emotional strength. Hirshfield looks at, inside, and through many things, including language. Buddhist?
Jan 03, 2011
Broadsided Press -
marked it as to-read
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
future-broadsided-author
"Critique of Pure Reason," a poem by Jane HIrshfield, will be Broadsided March 1, 2011.
"Yet words are not the end of thought, they are where it begins". Lovely little book.
She is able to find the magic and mystery in the ordinary and ignored.
When I think of Hirshfield's books, this one doesn't stand out for me.
I like her essays better so far. Here's a sample from this collection:
After Long Silence
Politeness fades,
a small anchovy gleam
leaving the upturned pot in the dish rack
after the moon has wandered out 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...more
After Long Silence
Politeness fades,
a small anchovy gleam
leaving the upturned pot in the dish rack
after the moon has wandered out 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...more
Spare, meditative poems that are rich in thought and feeling. "Of: An Assay", "To: An Assay", and "And: An Assay" meditate on those words and language with interesting results. One of my favorite poems was "Seventeen Pebbles", a grouping of seventeen short poems with an array of subjects and moods, united perhaps by a consistency of tone. Definitely a book to return to.
one of the best modern day poets
I enjoyed the intelligent poetry in this book ...she has a gentle & clever voice ..a couple of the poems stood out for me ..."Beneath the snow, the badger's steady breathing"...was one that moved me, as did "The Mountain" ..the author has a profound understanding of nature and what it means to be human.
I read and discussed these poems with my friend Jack who is much more knowledgeable about poetry than I am.
Oct 25, 2008
Kent
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
contemporary-poetry,
poetry-2000s
I might be putting too much pressure on poetry books when insisting that they use some kind of arc. Considering the overall argument in this book, and the many poems that relate to this argument about the ease of misinterpreting the intention behind language as well as the imprecision of language, I should be happy that it speaks to a theme.
i heard about this book on NPR.. and they read the best poem from the book on the air.. i'm not a huge fan of poetry anyways.. it is really pretty nature stuff.. just not my kind of thing.
I often feel the mystery of her perceptions - I don't completely understand what she's saying at all times, but she makes me think.
I've been craving poetry lately. This was beautiful, wonderful--fairly accessible and full of surprising moments.
I love Jane Hirshfield anyway, but this collection of poems is absolutely luminous.
Good writing, just a bit boring.
Recommended on NPR
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
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| Poetry Readers Ch...: After By Jane Hirshfield | 4 | 6 | May 03, 2012 03:27pm |
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Jane Hirshfield is the author of seven collections of poetry, including Come Thief (Knopf, August 23, 2011), After (HarperCollins, 2006), which was named a “Best Book of 2006” by The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, and England’s Financial Times and shortlisted for England’s T.S. Eliot Award; and Given Sugar, Given Salt (finalist for the 2001 National Book Critics Circle Award); as we...more
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“And that other self, who watches me from the distance of decades,
what will she say? Will she look at me with hatred or with compassion,
I whose choices made her what she will be?”
—
2 people liked it
More quotes…
what will she say? Will she look at me with hatred or with compassion,
I whose choices made her what she will be?”
Aug 02, 2010 02:55pm
updated Aug 18, 2010 07:13pm