And it was the title August 13th for most of the way and then near the end, sometime in the process, I got the idea that maybe that would be a somewhat bland title and I got the idea for wild gratitude, which I'm very proud of as a title. So, I think it works best when you find it in the process.
Edward HirschThere's never been a culture without poetry in the history of the world. In every culture, in every language there is expressive play, expressive word play, there's language use to different purposes that we would call poetry.
Edward HirschA great model for this is the way that Dante calls on Virgil at the beginning of 'The Inferno,' 'The Divine Comedy,' to help guide him through the underworld.
Edward HirschA certain construct of emotions that really define who you are and who you will become and I feel very much that my childhood is very alive inside of me, very close to me, very much part of me. And it's a sometimes painful, sometimes joyous inexhaustible resource for poetry.
Edward HirschScholars of the Hebrew bible define something they call wisdom literature and I would say clearly the poetry of wisdom is something that comes with age or that might come with age which has to do with reflecting on experience.
Edward HirschI walk with Federico Garcia Lorca around the Upper West Side in Manhattan because that was a neighborhood he lived in and I imagine walking around Paris with Cesar Vallejo, a great Peruvian poet who lived in Paris. And I kind of create the walk as a kind of drama of my apprenticeship.
Edward HirschI would say there are different kinds of poems. There are things that poets in the history of poetry hit upon when they're very young that can never be outdone and it's a remarkable, strange experience when you think of say Arthur Rimbaud who write poetry between the ages of 17 and 21 whose career was over by the time he was 22.
Edward Hirsch