Edward Hirsch Quotes

I never think about poetry except when I'm writing it. I mean my poetry.

It's absolutely crucial to maintain my life as a poet.

Of course, I have to consider that I've written a lot of prose, but I do in my heart think of myself as being originally, and still primarily, a poet.

My intention is to write poems. That's what I've been doing most of my life.

I've written poetry most of my life.

Verse is not written, it is bled; Out of the poet's abstract head. Words drip the poem on the page; Out of his grief, delight and rage.

Well, I still write poetry, but I wouldn't call myself a poet.

The reason a poet is a poet is to write poems, not to advertise himself as a poet.

I feel like I am in the service of the poem. The poem isn't something I make. The poem is something I serve.

I realized poetry's the thing that I can do 'cause I can stick at it and work with tremendous intensity.

I began the way nearly everybody I ever heard of - I began writing poetry. And I find that to be quite usual with writers, their trying their hand at poetry.

I've been writing poetry seriously since about 2008, 2009.

I guess the thing that I'm most proud of is that I kept on writing poetry. I understand that poetry is sort of the source of everything I do. It's the source of my creativity.

I am still interested in the long or serial poem, but have written a few smaller things. I may start sending to journals again in a year or so... that's about it.

The poem builds in my mind and sits there, as if in a register, until the poem, or a piece of a longer poem, is finished enough to write down. I can hold several lines in my head for quite some time, but as soon as they are written down, the register clears, as it were, and I have to work with what is on the paper.

To the poet fated to be a poet, self-expression is as natural and as involuntary as breathing is to us ordinary mortals.

I do not go in search of poetry. I wait for poetry to visit me.

I chose poetry. Actually, poetry chose me.

I love to read poetry but I haven't written anything that I'm willing to show anybody.

I still have a feeling that I haven't written the best that I can write. I think all poets must feel this: that there is constantly something new to be discovered in the language. It's like a thrilling encounter, and you can find things.

Nobody really knows whether they are a poet. I knew I was interested from the age of 15.

I'm conscious of a series of circles working its way through my life. And at this particular moment I have come round to the beginning of my writing cycle. It begins with poetry. There's hardly a day that goes past on which I don't write poetry.

If a poet is anybody, he is somebody to whom things made matter very little - somebody who is obsessed by Making.

Back then, I couldn't have left a poem a year and gone back to it.

But most commonly, it's one poem that I work on with a lot of intensity.