A Conversation with Jane Hirshfield
"To write for me has been always a process, first, of listening, not speaking; I wait for word-following words, for image-following sentences, for tone-following tones, then transcribe what arrives until a new path through the impenetrable thicket comes—sometimes—open. The sense of my life as a set of ever-changing and also ever-recurring questions gave the book its title: The Asking. Questions are listened for."
via MCSWEENEY'S |
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What Sparks Poetry:
Erin Marie Lynch on Reading Prose
"My family's archive was haunting me. Or the archive beneath the archive, the archive against the archive. The archive that could be for us. I was trying to trace the movements of my ancestors backwards, from Oregon to Standing Rock to the Dakota homelands in Minnesota. I needed to find out whether my great-great-grandmother, Elizabeth, had been involved in the forced march following the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 and the following atrocities. And I needed poetry to understand the varied and various rippings and sutures of our people and our land." |
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