Edward Hirsch

Why did the sun rise this morningIt's not naturalI don't want to see the lightIt's not time to close the casketOr say Kaddish for my sonI've already buried two fathersWith a mother to comeIsn't that enough Lord who wants usTo exalt and santify HimI don't want to wear the mourner's ribbonOr wake up crying every morningFor God knows how longI don't want to tuck my son into the groundAs if we were putting him to bedFor the last timeClose the prayer book I will not pretendThat God brings peace upon usAnd upon all IsraelI don't want to hear anyoneScolding me from her wheelchairBecause I'm crying too hardI'm not worried about a heart attackNothingnessYou've already broken my heartI will not forgive youSun of emptinessSky of blank cloudsI will not forgive youIndifferent GodUntil you give back my son

Friedrich Rückert wrote 425 poemsAfter his two youngest childrenDied from scarlet feverWithin sixteen days of each otherIn 1833 and 1834 he could not copeAnd often thought they had gone outFor a while "they'll be home soon"He told himself to tell his wife"They're only taking a long walk"Mahler scored five of those poemsIn 1901 and 1904 for a vocalistAnd an orchestra to break your heartAs soon as I heard the plaintive oboe And the descending movement of the hornAnd the lyric baritone enteringI felt I should not be listeningTo Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau singingKindertotenlieder with the Berlin PhilharmonicMahler's wife was superstitiousAnd thought he was chancing disasterWith Songs on the Death of Children"Now the sun wants to rise so brightlyAs if nothing terrible had happened overnightThat tragedy happened to me alone"Mahler knew he could never have written themAfter his four-year-old daughter diedFrom scarlet fever three years laterHe said he felt sorry for himselfThat he needed to write these songsAnd for the world that would listen to them

If you had told me, though, when I was twenty-four that I would write about Skokie, Illinois, where I grew up, I would have said, __ou__e out of your mind. Why would I have Skokie in a poem?_ But you become resigned. Your job is to write about the life you actually have.

I did not know the work of mourningIs like carrying a bag of cementUp a mountain at nightThe mountaintop is not in sightBecause there is no mountaintopPoor Sisyphus griefI did not know I would struggleThrough a ragged underbrushWithout an upward path...Look closely and you will seeAlmost everyone carrying bagsOf cement on their shouldersThat__ why it takes courageTo get out of bed in the morningAnd climb into the day.

Works of art imitate and provoke other works of art, the process is the source of art itself.

Poetry is meant to inspire readers and listeners, to connect them more deeply to themselves even as it links them more fully to others. But many people feel put off by the terms of poetry, its odd vocabulary, its notorious difficulty.

I started writing poetry as a teenager in suburban Chicago out of emotional desperation.

I aspire to a poetry of great formal integrity, deep passion and high intellect, and I have many models for how to do that.

The line is a way of framing poetry. All verse is measured by lines. The poetic line immediately announces its difference from everyday speech and prose.

Poetry takes place in time. It is a durational. Things take place in sequence.

The idea that a poem was a made thing stayed with me, and I decided then that I wanted to be an artist, not just a diarist. So I put myself through a kind of apprenticeship in writing poetry, and I understood even then that my practice as a poet was deeply related to my reading.

Poetry is a vocation. It is not a career but a calling.

One of the things that distinguishes poetry from ordinary speech is that in a very few number of words, poetry captures some kind of deep feeling, and rhythm is the way to get there. Rhythm is the way the poetry carries itself.

There's never been a culture without poetry in the history of the world.

I grew up in a middle-class house without books, without art. No one around me wrote poetry or even read it.

I had feelings that I didn't know what to do with, and I felt better when I started writing them. I thought of it as poetry. I did notice girls really liked it. Better than football. They liked the combination.

The terms of poetry - some simple, some complicated, some ancient, some new - should bring us closer to what we're hearing, enlarging our experience of it, enabling us to describe what we're reading, to feel and think with greater precision.

Writing poetry is such an intense experience that it helps to start the process in a casual or wayward frame of mind.