Thinking prompt #21: FROM POET JANE HIRSCHFIELD

Hi Everyone,

I’ve been dazzled by the essays in Janet Hirschfield’s book Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World, especially her examination of the life and work (and translations!) of Japanese poet Bashō and his development of haiku .

But please allow me to quote from her introduction—a beautiful exhortation to the writing life—as your thinking prompt today:

“Why ask art into a life at all, if not to be transformed and enlarged by its presence and mysterious means? Some hunger for more is in us—more range, more depth, more feeling, more associative freedom, more beauty. More perplexity and more friction of interest. More prismatic grief and unstunted delight, more longing, more darkness … More capacity to be astonished …”

Additional info:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/jane-hirshfield

Abrazos,

Cristina