OCTOBER 2023 - AudioFile
Jane Hirshfield is a wonderful poet (and essayist, although not in this collection) with a wonderfully broad range of interests. Among the poems here is an ode to buttons. She is also a fine reader of her own work. Her voice has a consistently soft texture from which she manages to wring a considerable range of emotion, always sounding as though she is speaking directly and personally to the listener. While the nominal subjects of the new and selected poems here have varied widely over the years, Hirshfield's general themes have remained consistent: an exploration of the natural world and our place in it, and the role of spirituality in our appreciation of that place. D.M.H. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
★ 11/20/2023
Spanning from 1971 to 2023, this outstanding chronological selection begins with new, uncollected work and ends with a portion from “Ledger,” published in 2020. A longtime practitioner of California Zen Buddhism who approaches poetry with the discipline of daily prayer, Hirshfield directs her poems at the natural world while examining problems of the self: “To be personal is easy:.../ I wanted to be mountainal, wateral, wrenal.” Poems about love are present throughout the author’s oeuvre. Still, Hirshfield wrestles with contradiction and despair; the lines “everything is still possible” and “everything now is finished” appear in the same poem. She is particularly skilled at writing short verses hinged on surprise; “Two Kerosene Lanterns,” for instance, wittily casts a mishap from a cat’s point of view. Doors and windows are frequent metaphors, as in “Three Times My Life Has Opened”: “There is a door. It opens. Then it is closed. But a slip of light/ stays, like a scrap of unreadable paper left on the floor,/ or the one red leaf the snow releases in March.” Longer poems take on difficult topics, including today’s political and environmental crises. These muscular yet lyrical poems offer necessary reminders of joy in a world marked by suffering. (Sept.)
From the Publisher
Among the most distinguished living poets in the English language, Jane Hirshfield is best known for finding the profound in the mundane, the mystical (but never supernatural) in the materiality of existence—an open-hearted relationship to the large and small . . . All with the clarity of sun on snowmelt." —Wen Stephenson, The Nation
“For half a century, Jane Hirshfield has been slaking the world’s soul on poems of perspective and consolation, fusing her Buddhist training, her passion for science, and her tenderness for all things living. The Asking collects some of her best work . . . poems that that achieve the most difficult and paradoxical of triumphs for a work of art: to remind us who and what we are, while at the same time furnishing what Iris Murdoch called 'an occasion for unselfing'.” —Maria Popova, The Marginalian, "Favorite Books of 2023"
“Jane Hirshfield has given us a body of work that is like no other in its ability to take a short lyric and fill it to the brim with passion and clarity of perspective, with precision and openness to the unknown. She is one of the few contemporaries whose work has already commanded a devoted readership for many years—and, without any doubt, for many more years to come. We are in the presence here of something extraordinary: a voice that feels as timeless as it is very much of this moment.″ —Ilya Kaminsky, McSweeney's
“[Hirshfield's] celebration of minute details brings readers into a space of awareness that continues even after our eyes leave the page. Hirshfield writes in awe of the world, of science and of imagination, and she threads her ideas together with a specificity and power of observation that demands our attention.” —Freya Sachs, BookPage
“Hirshfield is our poet of wonder and compassion. . . . [The Asking] represents a lifetime of vocation . . . attentive to life’s vicissitudes and the task of creating meaning through our lives without sure answers to ultimate questions.” —Spirituality and Practice
“If bigness is a measure of poetry, or radius of impact let’s say, then Jane Hirshfield easily ranks among the giants. . . . Hirshfield’s poems permeate our lives: they bless our weddings, show us why we must equate love with grief, they speak our own mythology and that of the Greeks’, they remind us to turn to the pleasures of skies, rivers and mountains while encouraging venture for the sake of venturing, and show us if we are open to it, how to greet the mystery of the self. . . . [Her poems'] meditative and tranquil qualities carry the body and heart. This volume is a gift.” —Debbra Palmer, New York Journal of Books
“Hirshfield’s mindfully measured poems, inquiries into the mysteries and fundamentals of being alive, of being human, are essential works . . . her lyrics are lushly observed and deeply questioning as well as nimble, imaginative, witty, and poignant . . . Her profound attunement to life's interconnectivity inspires her incisive dismay over our roughshod decimation of the great living web that sustains us. Hirshfield’s exquisitely formed, intricate reckonings incandesce in this necessary collection.” —Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)
Library Journal
12/22/2023
In her latest poetry collection, multi-award-winning poet and essayist Hirshfield (The Ledger; Ten Windows) offers poems from nine earlier collections as well as a generous sampling of new work. Hirshfield's poems reveal a strong connection to nature and a deep understanding of humanity. In striking language, she explores the deliciousness of food, her deep connections to animals, and the companionship of lovers and friends. In "For What Binds Us" she writes, "And when two people have loved each other/ see how it is like a/ scar between their bodies." It is not just the living Hirshfield ponders but also the departed: "The dead do not want us dead;/ such petty errors are left for the living./ Nor do they want our mourning." She often employs list poems, as when she describes a mountain: "Its night and day hawk-life, slope-life, fogs, coyote, tan oaks." Hirshfield has a way of slipping into the minds of animals and knowing what they know. In "Heat," the poet writes about her mare: "She'd widen her nostrils,/ sieve the world for news." VERDICT A superb collection from a remarkable poet whose prodigious talent grows with every addition to her oeuvre.—Doris Jean Lynch
