After: Poems

by Hirshfield, Jane

• ISBN13: 9780060779191
• ISBN10: 0060779195
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-04-02
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications

Summary

An investigation into incarnation, transience, and our intimate connection with all existence, by one of the preeminent poets of her generation

Table of Contents

After Long Silence	p. 1
Pyracantha and Plum	p. 2
Flowering Vetch	p. 3
Theology	p. 4
Hope: An Assay	p. 6
To Judgment: An Assay	p. 7
Those Who Cannot Act	p. 9
Sheep's Cheese	p. 10
Beneath the Snow, the Badger's Steady Breathing	p. 11
Sky: An Assay	p. 12
Pocket of Fog	p. 13
Articulation: An Assay	p. 14
Translucence: An Assay	p. 15
What Is Usual Is Not What Is Always	p. 16
The Mountain	p. 17
Tears: An Assay	p. 18
Poe: An Assay	p. 19
The Refusal	p. 21
Dog and Bear	p. 22
Downed Branch	p. 23
Vilnius	p. 24
"Of": An Assay	p. 25
"To": An Assay	p. 26
"And": An Assay	p. 28
Study of Melon & Insect	p. 29
A Man Walks Through His Life	p. 30
A Day Comes	p. 31
The Double	p. 32
Not Only Parallel Lines Extend to the Infinite	p. 34
I Imagine Myself in Time	p. 35
The Meeting	p. 36
Wanting More and More to Live Unobserved, Unobserving	p. 37
The Destination	p. 38
Late Self-Portrait by Rembrandt	p. 39
Ryoanji: An Assay	p. 40
To Opinion	p. 41
The Woodpecker Keeps Returning	p. 43
"It is night. It is very dark."	p. 44
Bonsai	p. 45
The Promise	p. 46
The Heat of Autumn	p. 47
To Wake at 3:00	p. 48
Dog Still Barking at Midnight	p. 49
Two Washings	p. 50
Termites: An Assay	p. 51
Envy: An Assay	p. 52
Hesitation: An Assay	p. 53
Once: An Assay	p. 54
Burlap Sack	p. 56
The Monk Stood Beside a Wheelbarrow	p. 57
I Write These Words to Delay	p. 58
Seventeen Pebbles	p. 59
To Spareness	p. 65
"Ah!": An Assay	p. 67
Against Certainty	p. 68
Jasper, Feldspar, Quartzite	p. 69
Instant Glimpsable Only for an Instant	p. 70
One Sand Grain Among the Others in Winter Wind	p. 71
To Speech	p. 72
Possibility: An Assay	p. 76
Bad Year	p. 77
Serrano Pepper	p. 78
This Much Is Promised	p. 79
In a Room with Five People, Six Griefs	p. 80
Ask Much, the Voice Suggested	p. 81
To Gravel: An Assay	p. 82
Each Morning My Neighbor Walks Out	p. 83
Between the Material World and the World of Feeling	p. 84
Red Scarf	p. 85
The Bell Zygmunt	p. 86
Letter to C	p. 87
The Dead Do Not Want Us Dead	p. 91
It Was Like This: You Were Happy	p. 92
Acknowledgments	p. 95
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

After
Poems

After Long Silence

Politeness fades,

a small anchovy gleam
leaving the upturned pot in the dish rack
after the moon has wandered out of the window.

One of the late freedoms, there in the dark.
The leftover soup put away as well.

Distinctions matter. Whether a goat's
quiet face should be called noble
or indifferent. The difference between a right rigor and pride.

The untranslatable thought must be the most precise.

Yet words are not the end of thought, they are where it begins.

After
Poems. Copyright © by Jane Hirshfield. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

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Excerpted from After: Poems by Jane Hirshfield
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.