Poet's Choice

Sometimes there were things to watch --
the pinched armor of a vanished cricket,
a floating maple leaf. Other days
she stared until she was assured
when she closed her eyes
she'd see only her own vivid blood.

She had an hour, at best, before Liza appeared
pouting from the top of the stairs.
And just what was mother doing
out back with the field mice? Why,

building a palace. Later
that night when Thomas rolled over and
lurched into her, she would open her eyes
and think of the place that was hers
for an hour -- where
she was nothing,
pure nothing, in the middle of the day.

EDWARD HIRSCH

Poetry connects us to what is deepest in ourselves. It gives us access to our own feelings, which are often shadowy, and engages us in the art of making meaning. It widens the space of our inner lives. It is a magical, mysterious, inexplicable (though not incomprehensible) event in language. It is "a revelation of words by means of the words" (Wallace Stevens), a form of "stored magic" (Robert Graves), "a room of marvels" (André Breton). It has a strong kinship to prayer. I consider it a verbal transaction, a bodily art form that opens up our spiritual selves.

It is a great privilege for me to take up Book World's Poet's Choice column, which was so insightfully inaugurated and shaped by Robert Hass over many years, and so handsomely carried forward by Rita Dove. They have set a light tone and a high standard, which I hope to emulate in the weeks and months to come. As a writer and an avid reader -- all writers are readers who have spilled over -- I have been inspired by many poems over the years and I am eager to share these poems with others. My idea is to introduce and present a broad spectrum of poets and poems from America and around the world.

Poetry is an ancient and international activity -- it precedes prose in all literatures, and there has never been a culture without it. This suggests how deeply we need the knowledge -- the wisdom -- that poetry carries in its body.

EDWARD HIRSCH ON ROBERT PINSKY

Air an instrument of the tongue.
The tongue an instrument
Of the body. The body
An instrument of spirit,
The spirit a being of the air.

-- Robert Pinsky, from "Song"

This is my next-to-last Poet's Choice column. It's time for me to move on. My regret at leaving the column is tempered by my delight that it will be taken over by Robert Pinsky, one of our very finest poet-critics, whose work I've been reading avidly for 30 years. I was lucky to start out with his first book, Sadness and Happiness (1975), which brought to contemporary poetry a rich discursiveness, a compelling new way of thinking and a refreshing sense of other people. I've followed him through his book-length poem An Explanation of America (1980), a remarkable meditation on being a citizen in our republic; History of My Heart (1984), which shows him to be an omnivorous thinker working at full power; The Want Bone (1990), which initiated a strange new lyricism into his work; The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poem s : 1966-1996 (1996), an essential gathering that included 21 new poems; and, most recently, Jersey Rain (2000), a work of mid-life reckonings. "Now near the end of the middle stretch of road/What have I learned?" he asks in the title poem. "Some earthly wiles. An art."

By now everyone should know that in 1997 Pinsky founded the Favorite Poem Project during his tenure as poet laureate of the United States (1997-2000). This project, a huge national resource, has culminated in three anthologies, which he has edited with Maggie Dietz: Americans' Favorite Poems ; Poems to Read ; and, most recently, An Invitation to Poetry: A New Favorite Poem Project Anthology , which includes a DVD of people from all walks of life saying something about their favorite poems and then reading them aloud. The original meaning of the word "anthology," which derives from the Greek, is "a bouquet of flowers," and these books compose a surprisingly diverse and colorful garden. They give us a strong sense of how single poems reach individual readers.

Here is one of my favorite poems by Pinsky. I once had the life-changing experience of teaching poetry to a group of deaf children, and thus this poem has special relevance to me:

If You Could Write One Great Poem, What Would You Want It To Be About?