Saturday, April 15, 2017
Lying Jane Hirshfield
Lying Jane Hirshfield
(Poem #1833) Lying He puts his brush to the canvas, with one quick stroke unfolds a bird from the sky. Steps back, considers. Takes pity. Unfolds another. |
(November 1994) Hirshfield's another new-to-me poet - I stumbled across this little gem while randomly surfing poetry sites and was instantly captivated. There is a wonderful balance between the static and the dynamic - the explicit description of painting leads me almost subconsciously to visualise the poem itself as a painting, beautiful and self-contained, and then a metaphorical step backwards reveals a temporal, almost balletic aspect that paradoxically enhances rather than shattering the impression of containedness. I was reminded strongly of Basho's famous haiku old pond..... a frog leaps in water's sound (Poem #23, and see also Poem #1455 and http://www.bopsecrets.org/gateway/passages/basho-frog.htm) - there is the same impression of a sequence of events captured within a bounded whole, though Hirshfield's penultimate "Takes pity" adds a human element that takes it beyond the isolated beauty of the haiku. martin [Links] Biography: American Poet, 1953- http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/563 [broken link] http://www.sunyulster.edu/people/Hirshfield.asp Interesting articles: [broken link] http://www.poems.com/hirinter.htm http://www.salon.com/weekly/hirshfield.html
Available link for download
