Edward Hirsch
Edward Hirsch is a celebrated poet and peerless advocate for poetry. He was born in Chicago in 1950—his accent makes it impossible for him to hide his origins—and educated at Grinnell College and the University of Pennsylvania, where he received a Ph.D. in Folklore. His devotion to poetry is lifelong. He has received numerous awards and fellowships, including a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Ingram Merrill Foundation Award, a Pablo Neruda Presidential Medal of Honor, the Prix de Rome, and an Academy of Arts and Letters Award. In 2008, he was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Edward Hirsch taught for six years in the English Department at Wayne State University and seventeen years in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston. He is now president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
Published 06/06/17
Published 06/06/17
Howl: As a poet, what is your writing process like?
Hirsch: I try to clear space every day to write and think. I don’t wait around for inspiration—that could be a long wait—but read other poems, try different formal experiments, see what sparks. I write by hand, then move to the computer, then revise by hand, then go back to the computer. That can go on for a long time.
Howl: How do you edit your work?
Hirsch: Much of writing is revision. I go over and over a poem until I think I have it right. Then I send it to a few other poets, trusted readers. Sometimes I have to go back to the drawing board, sometimes it’s finished or nearly finished. I try to be patient.
Howl: What advice would you have for budding writers?
Hirsch: It is absolutely crucial to read other people’s poetry, living and dead. There has never been a great poet who has not also been a great reader of poetry. Imitation is necessary. You are joining a noble enterprise.
Howl: As someone who has written multiple books on poetry, what do you believe makes a "good" poem?
Hirsch: I’m afraid there is no exact or scientific answer to that question. A poem is a made thing, and one of the ways we can evaluate it is to judge how well made it is. But that only takes us so far because we are also looking for something indefinable that happens in language, some other irrational element, a poem that illuminates experience.
Howl: As a poetic advocate, what excites you about contemporary poetry and what warnings, if any, would you have for poets or editors?
Hirsch: American poetry is as diverse as it has ever been. There are now more poets writing more different kinds of poems than ever before. Poetry has become a broad enterprise. It’s exciting to see so many writers affirming the values of art in our materialistic culture.
One of the things that worries me about many young poets and editors is that they don’t seem very interested in the poetry of the past, the poems that made our current poetry possible. All poets are contemporaneous, as Ezra Pound said, and it’s as important to read the ancient Chinese poets as it is to hear the newest slam poet.
Howl: Your poetry has a very confident tone to it (such as "I Was Never Able To Pray") and given your upbringing in Chicago, how would you say Carl Sandburg has influenced your literary career? Also, who would you recommend young poets read?
Hirsch: Sandburg was an inescapable model when I was growing up—he was the Chicago poet—and I have always loved his democratic working-class ethos. His work is very uneven, however, and some of his writing is sloppy. I now prefer the work of Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, and William Carlos Williams, all of whom were better at constructing free verse poems. Sandburg comes directly from Walt Whitman, who is a much greater poet, and I would encourage young poets to go back to Whitman, who is inexhaustible, and then read some of his progeny, such as Allen Ginsberg, Galway Kinnell, Philip Levine, and Adrienne Rich.
Howl: As president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, what excites you particularly about that work?
Hirsch: It’s thrilling to support so many top-notch writers, artists, scholars, and scientists working at the top of their fields. I feel lucky to get a front-row seat at the cutting edge of so many different kinds of work. It’s also true that we need critical thinking more than ever now. We have to defend our democratic and progressive institutions. We can’t take them for granted.
Howl: Your poem, "Edward Hopper and the House By the Railroad 1925", inspired by the painting, tends to explore the difference or relationship between a painting and a portrait, subject and artist. What role do you see the poet playing in the poet/reader relationship and vice versa? What are their responsibilities toward one another?
Hirsch: The great French poet Paul Valéry said that the purpose of poetry is not to inspire the writer but to inspire the reader. I think there is a kind of ethical compact between the poet who makes the poem and the reader who finds it. Poetry is a kind of spiritual encounter between two people are who are not physically present to each other. They are connected and deepened through a work of art. John Berryman wrote: “We are on each other’s hands / who care.”
Hirsch: I try to clear space every day to write and think. I don’t wait around for inspiration—that could be a long wait—but read other poems, try different formal experiments, see what sparks. I write by hand, then move to the computer, then revise by hand, then go back to the computer. That can go on for a long time.
Howl: How do you edit your work?
Hirsch: Much of writing is revision. I go over and over a poem until I think I have it right. Then I send it to a few other poets, trusted readers. Sometimes I have to go back to the drawing board, sometimes it’s finished or nearly finished. I try to be patient.
Howl: What advice would you have for budding writers?
Hirsch: It is absolutely crucial to read other people’s poetry, living and dead. There has never been a great poet who has not also been a great reader of poetry. Imitation is necessary. You are joining a noble enterprise.
Howl: As someone who has written multiple books on poetry, what do you believe makes a "good" poem?
Hirsch: I’m afraid there is no exact or scientific answer to that question. A poem is a made thing, and one of the ways we can evaluate it is to judge how well made it is. But that only takes us so far because we are also looking for something indefinable that happens in language, some other irrational element, a poem that illuminates experience.
Howl: As a poetic advocate, what excites you about contemporary poetry and what warnings, if any, would you have for poets or editors?
Hirsch: American poetry is as diverse as it has ever been. There are now more poets writing more different kinds of poems than ever before. Poetry has become a broad enterprise. It’s exciting to see so many writers affirming the values of art in our materialistic culture.
One of the things that worries me about many young poets and editors is that they don’t seem very interested in the poetry of the past, the poems that made our current poetry possible. All poets are contemporaneous, as Ezra Pound said, and it’s as important to read the ancient Chinese poets as it is to hear the newest slam poet.
Howl: Your poetry has a very confident tone to it (such as "I Was Never Able To Pray") and given your upbringing in Chicago, how would you say Carl Sandburg has influenced your literary career? Also, who would you recommend young poets read?
Hirsch: Sandburg was an inescapable model when I was growing up—he was the Chicago poet—and I have always loved his democratic working-class ethos. His work is very uneven, however, and some of his writing is sloppy. I now prefer the work of Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, and William Carlos Williams, all of whom were better at constructing free verse poems. Sandburg comes directly from Walt Whitman, who is a much greater poet, and I would encourage young poets to go back to Whitman, who is inexhaustible, and then read some of his progeny, such as Allen Ginsberg, Galway Kinnell, Philip Levine, and Adrienne Rich.
Howl: As president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, what excites you particularly about that work?
Hirsch: It’s thrilling to support so many top-notch writers, artists, scholars, and scientists working at the top of their fields. I feel lucky to get a front-row seat at the cutting edge of so many different kinds of work. It’s also true that we need critical thinking more than ever now. We have to defend our democratic and progressive institutions. We can’t take them for granted.
Howl: Your poem, "Edward Hopper and the House By the Railroad 1925", inspired by the painting, tends to explore the difference or relationship between a painting and a portrait, subject and artist. What role do you see the poet playing in the poet/reader relationship and vice versa? What are their responsibilities toward one another?
Hirsch: The great French poet Paul Valéry said that the purpose of poetry is not to inspire the writer but to inspire the reader. I think there is a kind of ethical compact between the poet who makes the poem and the reader who finds it. Poetry is a kind of spiritual encounter between two people are who are not physically present to each other. They are connected and deepened through a work of art. John Berryman wrote: “We are on each other’s hands / who care.”