Edward Hirsch – Michigan Quarterly Review

Edward Hirsch

EDWARD HIRSCH, a MacArthur Fellow, has published nine previous books of poetry, including The Living Fire: New and Selected Poems and Gabriel: A Poem, a book-length elegy for his son. He has also published seven books of prose, among them How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry, a national bestseller, and 100 Poems to Break Your Heart. He has received numerous prizes, including the National Book Critics Circle Award. A longtime teacher, at Wayne State University and in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston, Hirsch is now president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He lives in Brooklyn.

Hobbyhorse: Excerpt from “My Childhood in Pieces”

23 DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL, HIGH-SCHOOL EDITIONI started crying at unexpected times. I burst into tears on the wayto school. I started to write things down to see if I felt better. WhatI wrote came out in lines. I called it poetry. EYEWASHMy eyes were red from crying. We had a little blue eyewash […]

Hobbyhorse: Excerpt from “My Childhood in Pieces” Read More »

23 DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL, HIGH-SCHOOL EDITIONI started crying at unexpected times. I burst into tears on the wayto school. I started to write things down to see if I felt better. WhatI wrote came out in lines. I called it poetry. EYEWASHMy eyes were red from crying. We had a little blue eyewash

On Robert Hayden’s “Middle Passage”

I Jesús, Estrella, Esperanza, Mercy: Sails flashing to the wind like weapons, sharks following the moans the fever and the dying; horror the corposant and compass rose. Middle Passage: voyage through death to life upon these shores. “10 April 1800— Blacks rebellious. Crew uneasy. Our linguist says their moaning is a prayer for death, ours

On Robert Hayden’s “Middle Passage” Read More »

I Jesús, Estrella, Esperanza, Mercy: Sails flashing to the wind like weapons, sharks following the moans the fever and the dying; horror the corposant and compass rose. Middle Passage: voyage through death to life upon these shores. “10 April 1800— Blacks rebellious. Crew uneasy. Our linguist says their moaning is a prayer for death, ours

On Philip Levine’s “To Cipriano, in the Wind”

Where did your words go, Cipriano spoken to me 38 years ago in the back of Peerless Cleaners, where raised on a little wooden platform you bowed to the hissing press and under the glaring bulb the scars across your shoulders—“a gift of my country”—gleamed like old wood. “Dignidad,” you said into my boy’s wide

On Philip Levine’s “To Cipriano, in the Wind” Read More »

Where did your words go, Cipriano spoken to me 38 years ago in the back of Peerless Cleaners, where raised on a little wooden platform you bowed to the hissing press and under the glaring bulb the scars across your shoulders—“a gift of my country”—gleamed like old wood. “Dignidad,” you said into my boy’s wide

“Devil’s Night” by Edward Hirsch

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He saw teenagers carrying flammable cans / of kerosene and boxes of wooden matches, torching / the discarded carcasses of Fords and Chevies, / spreading flames through abandoned buildings / and unused factories, lighting one-story houses / on narrow lots in small neighborhoods.

“Devil’s Night” by Edward Hirsch Read More »

He saw teenagers carrying flammable cans / of kerosene and boxes of wooden matches, torching / the discarded carcasses of Fords and Chevies, / spreading flames through abandoned buildings / and unused factories, lighting one-story houses / on narrow lots in small neighborhoods.

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