Poet's Choice

These 130 columns written for the Washington Post Book World present a fascinating view of the breadth of world poetry and insight into the mind of a well read poet. The essays and poems are topical or biographical and include familiar topics such as Nightingales ("Perhaps I never heard you, but my life \ is bound up with your life, inseparably" Jorge Luis Borge) or Self Portraits ("Sick of being decent, he craves another \ crash. What reaches him except disaster? Frank Bidart). Looking at untypical subjects of poems we see Hirsh's insight for example on swimming "Kumin's poem .. finds a deeply religious element in the act of immersion." . Hirsh at time seems to offer psychological clarity "Grossman's poetry seems haunted by the Freudian idea that a son's poetic work should fulfill his mother's spoken (and unspoken) desires"). The poets span the world from Polish Czeslaw Milosz ("There was no thing on earth I wanted to posses."), to Yiddish Kadya Molodowsky ("Merciful God, /Choose another people/ Elect another") to Nebraskan Ted Kooser. So this book offers a good anthology of poets along with Hirsch's commentary which helps make the poems meaningful.

Other compilers or "editors" of similar collections, anthologies, or selected poems of single poets can look to Hirsch's "Poet's Choice" as a great model for their publications. Not just replications of poems collected or uncollected, Poet's Choice is instructional and pleasurable by way of the author-editor's personal comments re: his "favorites," the similarities and differences among poetic styles, nuances, etc. This book offers fine selections, but much more.

Hungry for tips on where to find brilliant, cutting-edge poets? Eager to learn about highly-talented poets with much to say wonderfully on human issues? Then buy Edward Hirsch's Poet's Choice and enjoy yourself. Each of his short chapters (three pages each!) introduces the reader to outstanding poets from around the world who have found their voices in personal catastrophe, ethnicity, life-altering experience, or sudden insight. After reading Hirsch's outstanding critiques of stunningly gifted, mostly 20th-Century poets, you'll want to buy their selected or collected works. And Hirsch's sensitive, evocative explanations of the poets' lives and poetic techniques are educational and motivational all by themselves. Hirsch, a respected poet himself, gives us lines like this one from his wistful chapter comparing poems and birdsongs: "There is something irrational in poetry, which still trembles with a holy air." And, in his chapter on the angst-driven love poems of Jane Mayhall, "There is something holy and crazed about an intensely personal grief." Hey, I'm more than ready for Poet's Choice, Part 2!

Always relevant, poetry addresses the great themes of our lives, love, loss, the modern terrors of a post 9/11 world, the scourge of war and a hope for peace. Tackling every human emotion and universal concept, poetry "puts us in touch with ourselves" as we interpret the words of the poets, personalizing and processing. This collection addresses every aspect of life, from the general to the personal perspective, our marginalized society, our place in the grand scheme of things and an ongoing dialog with history from the perspective of our own experiences. The poem is the sound of humanity, the voice of yearning and hope, restoring us to an increasingly alienating world, a private corner of the universe where we find comfort and expression. Poet's Choice is not just another collection of great poems, but a more intimate format, the author speaking to the landscape of poetry, the language of each selection, shared anecdotes, bits of information that render each work uniquely accessible: Jorge Luis Borges' "Nightingale"; Rabindranath Tagore's "Final Poems"; Nellie Sachs' "Butterfly"; Xuan Quynh's "Summer"; Pablo Neruda's "Body of a Woman" and "Walking Around", to name but a few. This is poetry in its natural context, complex, universally appealing. Thoughtfully assembled, the poets speak the language of the world, past and present, an anthology that begs for a permanent place on a desk or bedside table, an island of personal exploration that expands souls and heals the battered heart. "And so it has taken me all of sixty years to understand that water is the finest drink, and bread the most delicious food, and that art is worthless unless it plants a measure of splendor in people's hearts." (Taha Muhammad Ali) To absorb the depth of these poems is to appreciate the differences inherent in the world we inhabit, elevating the consciousness and reaching for the finer self, one with the universe in human experience and the source of hope. Luan Gaines/ 2006.

I prefer anthologies for my intermittent poetry reading jags, so the role of editor is important. And after looking through POET'S CHOICE, I think that a case could be made that Edward Hirsch is the most auspicious choice for poetry editor/scholar that one could make. In POET'S CHOICE, Hirsch has brought together material from his "Poet's Choice" columns to run alongside both international poems (which comprise one half of the book) and the work of American poets (the other half.) POET'S CHOICE is further organized into chapters exploring subgenres of poetry that a layperson would not ordinarily encounter. The odd thing is, Hirsch's introductory essays are so good, one can spend as much time enjoying his prose as the poems themselves! By providing this accessible context and thought-provoking analysis with terrific poetry, Hirsch has compiled a truly excellent book. It's sublime reading both for the short term and for the long haul as well. Just for fun, the following is a poem by the late William Matthews, which lays out the "Four Subjects of Poetry": 1. I went out in the woods today, and it made me feel, you know, sort of religious. 2. We're not getting any younger. 3. It sure is cold and lonely... (a.) without you, honey. (b.) with you, honey. 4. Sadness seems but the other side of the coin of happiness, and vice-verse, and in any case, it is too soon spent, and on what, we know not what.