'Flushing out life's experiences'

 

“One reason to write a poem is to flush from the deep thickets of the self some thought, feeling, comprehension, question, music, you didn't know was in you, or in the world.” Jane Hirshfield

Born on Feb. 24, 1953, Hirshfield has written many books of poetry, received numerous awards, and established herself as a giant among poets in the past half century. Her collection Given Sugar, Given Salt was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and After was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize.  She also authored a highly regarded book of essays about poetry, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry.                                               

 

“My job as a human being as well as a writer is to feel as thoroughly as possible the experience that I am part of, and then press it a little further.”   Here, for Saturday’s poem is Hirshfield’s,

 

 

Changing Everything

I was walking again
in the woods,
a yellow light
was sifting all I saw.

Willfully,
with a cold heart,
I took a stick,
lifted it to the opposite side
of the path.

There, I said to myself,
that's done now.
Brushing one hand against the other,
to clean them
of the tiny fragments of bark.