Of Gravity and Angels

by Jane Hirshfield

'Jane Hirshfield's is a brave, new voice that, finding itself in its first volume, now goes on to ever more searching music. Brave in its nakedness, her work like a lucid stream enjoys itself as it keeps its surefooted course. Written with the precision only passion can ensure, the poems commend us to the gay gravity of angels. This is a collection to be indeed relished and prized.' - Theodore Weiss

Genres: Poetry, Female Authors

71 pages, Paperback

First published February 15, 1988

About the author

Jane Hirshfield is the author of nine collections of poetry, including the forthcoming Ledger (Knopf, March 2020), The Beauty (Knopf, 2015), longlisted for the National Book Award, 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 well as two now-classic books of essays, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry and Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World. She has also edited and co-translated three books collecting the work of women poets from the distant past, and one e-book on Basho and the development of haiku, The Heart of Haiku. Hirshfield’s other honors include The Poetry Center Book Award, the California Book Award, fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the 40th Annual Distinguished Achievement Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets, an honor previously received by Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, and William Carlos Williams. Her work has been featured in ten editions of The Best American Poems and appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Times Literary Supplement/TLS, The American Poetry Review, Poetry, The New York Review of Books, Orion, McSweeney’s, and elsewhere. Hirshfield’s poems have also been featured many times on Garrison Keillor’s Writers Almanac as well as two Bill Moyers’ PBS television specials. She has presented her poems and taught at festivals and universities throughout the U.S., in China, Japan, the Middle East, the U.K., Poland, and Ireland. In 2019, she was elected into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

Hirshfield's appearance schedule can be found at:

Reviews

[Emily Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Still, my lungs lift their habitual cartons of air.
And the ones whose lives I uncrease and turn,
spread out over this white table—I know little of them
but that children, if possible, are fed, the young men
and young women must look at one another, and that it is hard.
And hard too to live in this place where even the best, the luckiest,
lose everything if not today then tomorrow or next year and still we have not found out how to be kind.”

[Peycho Kanev · Rating 4 out of 5]

OF GRAVITY & ANGELS

And suddenly, again,
I want the long road of your thigh
under my hand, your well-traveled thigh,
your salt-slicked & come-slicked thigh,
and I want the taste of you, slaking,
under my tongue (that place of riding desire,
my tongue) and I want
all the unnameable, soft, and yielding places,
belly & neck & the place wings would rise from
if we were angels,
and we are, and I want the rising regions of you
shoulder & cock & tongue & breathing &
suddenness of you
opening
all fontanel, all desire, the whole thing beginning
for the first time again, the first,
until I wonder then how is it
we even know which part we are,
even know the ground that lifts us, raucous,
out of ourselves,
as the rising sound of a summer dawn
when all of it joins in.

TO DRINK

I want to gather your darkness
in my hands, to cup it like water
and drink.
I want this in the same way
as I want to touch your cheek
it is the same
the way a moth will come
to the bedroom window in late September,
beating and beating its wings against cold glass;
the way a horse will lower
his long head to water, and drink,
and pause to lift his head and look,
and drink again,
taking everything in with the water,
everything.

[Vincent Scarpa · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Some questions cannot be answered.
They become familIar weights in the hand,
round stones pulled from the pocket,
unyielding and cool.
Your fingers travel their surfaces,
lose themselves finally
in the braille of the durable world.” — “Woman in Red Coat”

[Cody · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poetry is a tricky thing. It might seems so small, and in actuality it is with only 71 pages, but 1 of those 71 pages require much more thought and consideration than entire chapters in most books. It's not something you can just breeze through and read casually. In fact, Of Gravity and Angels had a few entries that went above my head. What did stick and I was able to comprehend was awesome. Hirshfield has a lot of variety in this, but two main themes I was left with was death and sex. She writes about what she knows and is comfortable with, nothing more so evident than horses. My absolute favorites in this book are: For What Binds Us and Heat.

[Víctor Bermúdez · Rating 4 out of 5]

August hungry ghosts.

[shelby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this. Can’t wait to read more of Hirshield’s poetry!

[Jen Avery · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part 2: For What Binds Us, is a solid 5 stars. There were outstanding poems throughout the rest, and overall this is a very moving collection.

[Al-anoud Al-Serhan · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's the first collection of poetry I've read by Hirshfield,beautifully written.specially part two : for what binds us.

“SLEEPING
Here, we are one geography:
every part of us inked on a map
where, across all the blue waters,
continents' edges inexplicably match.
I move closer to you in the dark,
feel the slow heat
that embers you deeper into the night.
Where all fires descend a few hours
into their own slow-dreaming hearts.
Where the ravine hides in its own steepness
no matter how long, how fiercely we love”

[Sandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

An earlier work which reflects a fresh voice just matured, giving these layered poems a certain music that only comes at that juncture. Nursed this volume along and read a poem each night, some repeatedly. Especially fond of "Needles of Pine, of Morning," a reminder of how short a time we "rock" on this river and, though we encounter the difficulties, how we have yet to find out "how to be kind."

[Jimmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this a little more than her more recent book, so I'll give her a break with 4 stars. The title of the book sound like it was written by a fourteen-year-old. But when you read the title poem, it's certainly by a woman. There was a little less cutesy-wutesy in this book, so I didn't feel the need to pinch her cheeky-weeky.

[Cassandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even the worst of these are splendid, and the best overwhelm me.

[Maughn Gregory · Rating 5 out of 5]

What must it be like, to be able to think and feel and write like this?

[David Stephens · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Jane Hirshfield’s poetry, the crinkle of the leaves and the wind-swept dust become the poetry of the earth and, thus, her words become “the braille of the durable world,” capturing corporeal bits while only hinting at the Platonic forms that lie beyond.

Concurrently, human pains bleed into nature and vice versa. In “Invocation,” the narrator becomes the muse for human-fed raccoons. In “Dialogue,” the narrator sees their reflection in the mirror as a black bird. And in many of the early poems of the collection, the shape of the landscape mimics the shape of the body, hillside to shoulder, river to spine. She may sometimes fall back on commonplace pastoral images, but she is more often than not able to shift the tenor of a poem so that these images at least have a new shine.

The poems are varied, but a recurring focus is the tension between a higher state of being and the restfulness and conformity the body tends toward. There is no mere equation of ascension with morality here, though, as Hirshfield eschews many conventional standards of morality–for her, purity is uncouth and sexual partnership is a form of human solidarity, as she makes clear in “I Have No Use for Virgins.” Instead, she calls the raising up of the body having “proud flesh,” an urge to resist the body’s resting place until it becomes natural that one would want to rest, finally and comfortably, one with the world.

[Puri Kencana Putri · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Each night you come home with five continents on your hands: garlic, olive oil, saffron, anise, coriander, tea, your fingernails blackened with marjoram and thyme. Sometimes the zucchini's flesh seems like a fish-steak, cut into neat filets, or the salt-rubbed eggplant yields not bitter water, but dark mystery. You cut everything to bits. No core, no kernel, no seed is sacred: you cut onions for hours and do not cry, cut them to thin transparencies, the red ones spreading before you like fallen flowers; you cut scallions from white to green, you cut radishes, apples, broccoli, you cut oranges, watercress, romaine, you cut your fingers, you cut and cut beyond the heart of things, where nothing remains, and you cut that too, scoring coup on the butcherblock, leaving your mark, when you go your feet as pounded as brioche dough," (Cook, Hirsfield, 1988, p. 71). Beautifully written. Jane Hirshfield elaborates all the plots with clarity. I enjoyed every bits on it.

[B. Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this quite a bit. I'm currently in the process of consuming mass amounts of poetry (which is probably not how it's supposed to be read, but oh well.)

What I liked about this was the imagery. It reminded me of summer evenings, the changing of seasons, and the connections between people, (if that makes any sense whatsoever.) Was not so fond of the desire poems, but the ending ones were poignant.

[Patricia Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was fascinated by the tone and atmosphere of these poems. Quiet, heavy, rich.

Some of my favorite moments:

This garden is no metaphor— more a task that swallows you into itself, earth using, as always, everything it can.

Again rain: and the world like a fish held under running water while the knife-blade smooths the skin of scales.

[Ross · Rating 4 out of 5]

And when two people have loved each other
see how it is like a
scar between their bodies,
stronger, darker, and proud;
how the black cord makes of them a single fabric
that nothing can tear or mend.

[Bradley · Rating 2 out of 5]

I felt this collection was uneven. The poem "For What Binds Us" and the last poem "Lullabye" were stunning. I was left with a transcendent feeling—both intellectually and spiritually with these.

[Brandon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hirshfield brings an Eastern-influenced (she is a buddhist) approach to poetry in a collection I found plain okay.

[Mia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some hits and misses for me in this book, but the ''hits'' were like a punch in the gut.

[Emily Sullivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful poetry.

[sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

i love her obsession with salt and mares<3

[natàlia · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I want to gather your darkness
in my hands, to cup it like water
and drink.”


i mean, what is there left to say? i might have found one of my favourite poets by reading this. this book felt like a punch in the stomach and also a reminder of why poetry is the purest, most beautiful form of literature.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Luscious poems from this Bay Area resident, full of heart, delightful observances, and an ear for the music of language.
"Look at the alley there,/ between the buildings: how the motes dance down,/ slip between gravity and air./ See how the sliding days silt in with seeing, drown."
and brilliant little embedded pieces like:
"... sifted, particular sand."

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am a huge fan of Jane Hirshfield. This is just not one of my favorite of her books. Too many horses and horse imagery for me, and lacking the clarity of her other books. But it was an early book, her second, I think, and still a good book. Just not a great book, which she has also written.

[Tiffany Morris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sensuous and lush, Hirshfield's words illuminate the page with love, sex, death, horses, countrysides and beautiful ruminations. While perhaps not as polished as her later work, the poems are still remarkable and uniquely hers.

[Amber · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favorite poems: To drink, The Hungry Ghosts, Dialogue, I Have No Use for Virgins

[Daniel Urban-brown]

My favorite Jane Hirshfield collection. Really, really, really, really, really lovely.

[Bethany · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't like it quite as well as some of her later work, but it's still pretty darn amazing.

[Tasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Master.