An Affable Conversation with Edward M. Hirsch

Photo Credit : Michael Lionstar

Edward M. Hirsch is a celebrated American poet and peerless advocate for poetry and critic.   He  wrote a national bestseller about reading poetry called How to Read a Poem: And Fall in Love with Poetry. He has published nine books of poems, including The Living Fire: New and Selected Poems (2010), which brings together thirty-five years of work, and Gabriel: A Poem (2014), a book-length elegy for his son that The New Yorker called "a masterpiece of sorrow." His essays have been published in the American Poetry Review, The New York Times Book Review, The New York Review of Books, and elsewhere. He wrote a weekly column on poetry for The Washington Post Book World from 2002 to 2005, which resulted in his book Poet’s Choice (2006). His other prose books include Responsive Reading (1999), The Demon and the Angel: Searching for the Source of Artistic Inspiration (2002), and A Poet's Glossary (2014), a complete compendium of poetic terms. Hirsch's first collection of poems, For the Sleepwalkers, received the Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets and the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award from New York University. His second book, Wild Gratitude, received the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1986. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1985 and a five-year MacArthur Fellowship in 1997. He received the William Riley Parker Prize from the Modern Language Association for the best scholarly essay in PMLA for the year 1991. He has also received an Ingram Merrill Foundation Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, a Pablo Neruda Presidential Medal of Honor, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature. He is a former Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets He is president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in New York City. I had the pleasure and honor of asking Edward about the role of critics in literature today, How does he choose specific words to reveal the symbolism of the emotions he conveys in his poems, what draws him to writing, poetry and prose, and what is next for him and so much more.

UZOMAH: How has your creative and writing process changed at all?

EDWARD: Creativity is a process of discovery. I’m not aware that my process has changed, but it never feels the same either. Every work has its’ own special requirements. There is a long foreground, a certain amount of hard work, and intentional labor. But there is also a point where voluntary effort must give way to something unexpected, uncontrollable, and irrational. The making of art combines conscious and unconscious labor.


U: What do you think the role of critics in literature is today? How crucial is the critic to literature?

E: We live in a time when academic criticism is primarily a form of suspicious reading. I see the project somewhat differently. I find that readers can often use help in encountering a work of art. I think the role of the critic is to model a certain type of engaged reading. You start with the act of encounter, the thrill of discovery, and move on from there. It all starts with contact.


U: How can more teachers whose work involves preteen children get them more involved with poetry and learning the art?

E: My experience is that teaching is most successful when teachers teach what they care about. The teacher is a model presence. Passion endures. I’m not so concerned with what particular texts teachers bring to their students. More crucially is how they present these texts. Emerson says that nothing great was ever accomplished without enthusiasm. I find it contagious.


U: How do you choose specific words to reveal the symbolism of the emotions you convey in your poems?

E: There’s no formula. The meaning is in the sound of the words. For some reason, certain combinations of words create a frisson in the reader. It has to do with the underlying feeling. Emotion communicates; it endures.

U: What has been a landmark event in your writing career?

E: My freshman humanities teacher at Grinnell College read my poems. She communicated to me that she thought I could become a poet but that what I was writing was not poetry. I was just putting down my feelings. An artist is a maker; a poem is a made thing. She taught me that if I wanted to create poetry, I would have to learn something about poetry. I would have to join the stream. I started to imitate what I read. That was the beginning.


U: What draws you to writing poetry and prose?

E: I have always been drawn to poetry by feelings that I cannot contain or understand. I have been drawn to critical prose to share my love of poetry.


U: Do you have any tips for writers and poets who do not have access to traditional means in a classroom?

E: There are no great writers who are not great readers. One does not need a classroom. One does need to throw oneself into other works of art. You learn by studying others. Every Dante needs a Virgil. Every Inferno needs an Aeneid.

U: You often write about poems and celebrate poetry in your poetry. What is your desired impact to reach audiences new to poetry and those who are seasoned?

E: I write for both initiated and uninitiated readers. My hope is that the uninitiated will find something meaningful and life-affirming. At the same time, I believe that my combination of biography, history and close textual reading will offer something new to even the most seasoned readers. 

U: What is next for you as an advocate, writer, and poet?

E: I am just publishing a book called The Heart of American Poetry. This book is an attempt to outline a poetry of democracy, why it matters, and how it works. I am talking about the entire project of American poetry—what is our contribution to world literature? To me, that is heartening in a disheartening time.

 For more information about Edward’s writing, please visit his site.