One Art
BY PROF. VAROL AKMAN
Jane Hirshfield (b. 1953)
A good poem is a bit like a volcanic island. It creates new terrain of the soul.
According to Alain Badiou, the philosopher intervenes when in a situation -- be it political, scientific, romantic, etc. -- there are signs that call for the invention of a new problem. This new problem involves novel truths and may lead to commitment plus involvement on the part of the philosopher. Described by The New York Times as "radiant and passionate," Jane Hirshfield comes very close to the artistic equivalent of Badiou's philosopher. She invariably aims at comprehending and intensifying experience by bringing it into words. Poetry, for her, is a way of discerning and sensing both self and world. She is not commonly known as a political poet yet her poems regularly act in response to existing social ills.
Hirshfield was born on February 24, 1953, in New York City. She received her bachelor's degree from Princeton University. She has taught at UC Berkeley, Duke University and Bennington College, and has had fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Academy of American Poets. Her work has appeared in Poetry, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Times Literary Supplement, The Nation and The Best American Poetry (seven times).
Hirshfield is the author of several collections of poetry, including "Come, Thief" published in 2011. "After" (2006) was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize and named a "best book" by The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle and The London Financial Times. "Given Sugar, Given Salt" (2001) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. These books were preceded by "The Lives of the Heart" (1997) and "The October Palace" (1994).
Hirshfield's other honors include The Poetry Center Book Award and three Pushcart Prizes. In 2004, Hirshfield was awarded the 70th Academy Fellowship for distinguished poetic achievement by The Academy of American Poets. Recently she was elected chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.
This week's poem is from "Given Sugar, Given Salt" and is reprinted by kind permission of the author. You can hear a superb rendition by Garrison Keillor at http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org /index.php?date=2003/02/05.
> Poems arrive for me more through the cracks of my life, like fog or the scent of something cooking down the hall. The writer has to get out of the way so that the writing can do the writing. On the other hand, I do have some fairly specific needs. One is solitude; another, closely connected, is relative silence, freedom from the sounds human beings make, both speech and music.
> Every good poem -- formal or free verse -- conducts a musical, electrical, emotional score for which you yourself are the instrument, whether on the tongue or by inner hearing. Even when reading silently, the larynx is moving, the breath is changing -- we feel a poem in no small part by its rhythms and tones in our bodies. I can't imagine a poem being of interest if it doesn't summon you more deeply into your own body as you are writing, hearing, or reading it.
> What I appreciate in the Occupy movement…is the same thing others criticize it for: that it isn't organized or single, that it's not boiled down, not bullet points and not bullets. To stand in simple protest is an alternative to the more straightforward forms of political recourse, one that's rooted in feeling and in the basic recognition of solidarity. Occupy, for now at least, is expressing itself in signs that, like a good poem, point in a lot of different directions at once.
> Every poem I write bows toward prosody, one way or another, even if it's the faintest slap of water against the hull of a boat. If the ear and breathing aren't awake and engaged, for me, it's not a poem, it's just jottings. I don't know quite why certain poems take that on more strongly, but it does seem to me that certain forms are engines for certain kinds of thought and feeling. There are three villanelles I've long loved -- Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art." Theodore Roethke's "The Waking." Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night."
NOTE
The opening quote is from a 1997 interview with Atlantic Unbound's Katie Bolick. The excerpts appear courtesy of the author. The first three are from an interview by Amy Pence, to be published in The Writer's Chronicle this year. The last one is from a 2011 interview by Brian Bouldrey for The Best American Poetry blog.
THIS WAS ONCE A LOVE POEM
This was once a love poem,
before its haunches thickened, its breath grew short,
before it found itself sitting,
perplexed and a little embarrassed,
on the fender of a parked car,
while many people passed by without turning their heads.
It remembers itself dressing as if for a great engagement.
It remembers choosing these shoes,
this scarf or tie.
Once, it drank beer for breakfast,
drifted its feet
in a river side by side with the feet of another.
Once it pretended shyness, then grew truly shy,
dropping its head so the hair would fall forward,
so the eyes would not be seen.
It spoke with passion of history, of art.
It was lovely then, this poem.
Under its chin, no fold of skin softened.
Behind the knees, no pad of yellow fat.
What it knew in the morning it still believed at nightfall.
An unconjured confidence lifted its eyebrows, its cheeks.
The longing has not diminished.
Still it understands. It is time to consider a cat,
the cultivation of African violets or flowering cactus.
Yes, it decides:
Many miniature cacti, in blue and red painted pots.
When it finds itself disquieted
by the pure and unfamiliar silence of its new life,
it will touch them -- one, then another --
with a single finger outstretched like a tiny flame.