A lucid exploration of poetry and poets that would be useful for beginners, teachers, and veteran poets. If you're interested in Japanese poetry, you'll also be in luck as the author has done some translation work in that area, and at least two chapters make use of her knowledge. Overall, she uses poems and poets from a variety of countries and eras to illustrate her points, and she's never confusing. These essays are illuminating and inspiring. The next time I teach poetry (crossing fingers), I'll be sure to incorporate material from this book.

"Poetry and the Mind of Concentration"

As far as I can recall, this is my first experience reading Jane Hirshfield's prose, and she's clearly going to be another poet whose writing on poetry is my favorite. Her prose is lyrical and lucid, and what she has to say, in this first essay, anyway, brings clarity to the way poetry works, whether you're new to poetry or experienced. She has an original and helpful way of explaining difficult concepts and the process of how we engage with poems. She uses a variety of poets' works as examples, some of which I was familiar with, some not, but mostly by "name poets" I recognized and have read.

Looking forward to the rest and wishing I were teaching a workshop so I could teach with this book!

Like Louise Gluck's poetry, her prose in these essays on poetry are concise, insightful, crisp and deeply intelligent. Each one offered me something useful as a poet, teacher, and/or person. There's the spark of recognition in what she has to say about her own process as a writer and in her interpretations and close readings of particular poems and poets. She can be brave, too, in making cases for the usually (or temporarily) spurned, like impoverishment/passivity and sincerity (versus truth).

There's nothing like reading a great book/collection on craft and feeling re-energized and compelled to write. This book did that for me.