I'd say people do need some help with poetry because I think poetry just helps takes us to places that Americans aren't always accustomed to going. Edward Hirsch Poetry
When poetry separates from song, then the words have to carry all the rhythm themselves; they have to do all the work. They can't rely on the singing voice. Edward Hirsch Poetry
One of the things that distinguishes poetry from ordinary speech is that in a very few number of words, poetry captures some kind of deep feeling, and rhythm is the way to get there. Rhythm is the way the poetry carries itself. Edward Hirsch Poetry
I grew up in a middle-class house without books, without art. No one around me wrote poetry or even read it. Edward Hirsch Poetry
Poetry takes courage because you have to face things and you try to articulate how you feel. Edward Hirsch Courage
The line is a way of framing poetry. All verse is measured by lines. The poetic line immediately announces its difference from everyday speech and prose. Edward Hirsch Poetry
I started writing poetry as a teenager in suburban Chicago out of emotional desperation. Edward Hirsch Poetry
I aspire to a poetry of great formal integrity, deep passion and high intellect, and I have many models for how to do that. Edward Hirsch Poetry
I didn't read poetry seriously until college, when I really began to devour it in a very intense way. I also discovered that a poet is a maker. Before that, I thought a poet was someone who wrote about his own experiences. Edward Hirsch Poetry
The idea that a poem was a made thing stayed with me, and I decided then that I wanted to be an artist, not just a diarist. So I put myself through a kind of apprenticeship in writing poetry, and I understood even then that my practice as a poet was deeply related to my reading. Edward Hirsch Poetry
Poetry is meant to inspire readers and listeners, to connect them more deeply to themselves even as it links them more fully to others. But many people feel put off by the terms of poetry, its odd vocabulary, its notorious difficulty. Edward Hirsch Poetry
Writing poetry is such an intense experience that it helps to start the process in a casual or wayward frame of mind. Edward Hirsch Poetry
The terms of poetry - some simple, some complicated, some ancient, some new - should bring us closer to what we're hearing, enlarging our experience of it, enabling us to describe what we're reading, to feel and think with greater precision. Edward Hirsch Poetry