I find great consolation in having a lot of poetry books around. I believe that writing poetry and reading it are deeply intertwined. Furthermore, I've always delighted in the company of the poets I've read.

— Edward Hirsch

If you had told me, though, when I was twenty-four that I would write about Skokie, Illinois, where I grew up, I would have said, ‘You’re out of your mind. Why would I have Skokie in a poem?’ But you become resigned. Your job is to write about the life you actually have.

— Edward Hirsch

I grew up in a middle-class house without books, without art. No one around me wrote poetry or even read it.

— Edward Hirsch

I had feelings that I didn't know what to do with, and I felt better when I started writing them. I thought of it as poetry. Furthermore, I did notice girls really liked it. Better than football. They liked the combination.

— Edward Hirsch

I'm a poet, and I spent my life in poetry.

— Edward Hirsch

I'm so happy to be an advocate for poetry.

— Edward Hirsch

In every culture, in every language, there is expressive play, expressive word play; there's language use to different purposes that we would call poetry.

— Edward Hirsch

I started writing poetry as a teenager in suburban Chicago out of emotional desperation.

— Edward Hirsch

One of the things that distinguishes poetry from ordinary speech is that in a very few number of words, poetry captures some kind of deep feeling, and rhythm is the way to get there. Rhythm is the way the poetry carries itself.

— Edward Hirsch

Poetry is a form of necessary speech... I have sought to restore the aura of sacred practice that accompanies true poetic creation, to honor both the rational and the irrational elements of poetry.

— Edward Hirsch