And every year there is a brief, startling moment When we pause in the middle of a long walk home and Suddenly feel something invisible and weightless Touching our shoulders, sweeping down from the air: It is the autumn wind pressing against our bodies; It is the changing light of fall falling on us.

— Edward Hirsch

As long as there's been poetry, there have been lamentations.

— Edward Hirsch

Daydreaming is one of the key sources of poetry - a poem often starts as a daydream that finds its way into language - and walking seems to bring a different sort of alertness, an associative kind of thinking, a drifting state of mind.

— Edward Hirsch

Friedrich Rückert wrote 425 poems After his two youngest children Died from scarlet fever Within sixteen days of each other In 1833 and 1834 he could not Copeland often thought they had gone outfox a while "they'll be home soon"He told himself to tell his wife"They're only taking a long walk"Mahler scored five of those poems In 1901 and 1904 for a vocalist And an orchestra to break your hearts soon as I heard the plaintive oboe And the descending movement of the horn And the lyric baritone entering felt I should not be listening To Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau singingKindertotenlieder with the Berlin Philharmonic Mahler's wife was superstitious And thought he was chancing disaster With Songs on the Death of Children"Now the sun wants to rise so brightly As if nothing terrible had happened overnight That tragedy happened to me alone"Mahler knew he could never have written them After his four-year-old daughter died From scarlet fever three years later He said he felt sorry for himself That he needed to write these songs And for the world that would listen to them

— Edward Hirsch

I aspire to a poetry of great formal integrity, deep passion and high intellect, and I have many models for how to do that.

— Edward Hirsch

I did not know the work of mourning Is like carrying a bag of cementum a mountain at night The mountaintop is not in sight Because there is no mountaintop Poor Sisyphus grief did not know I would struggle Through a ragged underbrush Without an upward path... Look closely, and you will see Almost everyone carrying bags Of cement on their shoulders That’s why it takes courage To get out of bed in the morning And climb into the day.

— Edward Hirsch

I didn't read poetry seriously until college, when I really began to devour it in a very intense way. I also discovered that a poet is a maker. Before that, I thought a poet was someone who wrote about his own experiences.

— Edward Hirsch

I don't think poetry will die, but I think that poetry does demand a certain kind of attention to language. It does demand a certain space in order to read it, and I think that space is somewhat threatened by the lack of attention that people have and the amount of time that they give to things.

— Edward Hirsch

I don't think you can read poetry while you're watching television very well.

— Edward Hirsch

I'd say people do need some help with poetry because I think poetry just helps takes us to places that Americans aren't always accustomed to going.

— Edward Hirsch