Ledger by Jane Hirshfield (English) Paperback Book

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Jane Hirshfield is a visionary American writer with a wide readership. Her urgent new collection is a book of personal, ecological and political reckoning. Her poems inscribe a ledger personal and communal, a registry of our time's and lives' dilemmas as well as a call to action on climate change, social justice and the plight of refugees.

FORMATPaperback LANGUAGEEnglish CONDITIONBrand New Publisher Description

Jane Hirshfield's urgent new collection is a book of personal, ecological and political reckoning. Her poems inscribe a ledger personal and communal, a registry of our time's and lives' dilemmas as well as a call to action on climate change, social justice and the plight of refugees. The poems of Ledger record riches, both abiding and squandered, and mourn our failures. They confirm, too, the continually renewing gift of the present moment, summoning our responsibility as moral beings to sustain one another and the earth's continuance. Finally, it is the human spirit and the language of poetry – loyal instruments of recognition, humility and praise – that triumph in this stunned, stunning accounting, set forth by a master poet whose voice is tonic and essential, whose breadth of inclusion and fierce awareness rivet attention. Hers is a poetry of clarity and hybrid vigour, drawing deeply on English and American traditions but also those of world poetry. The poetries of modern and classical Greece, of Horace and Catullus, of classical China and Japan and Eastern Europe all resonate in Jane Hirshfield's structures of thought and in her sensibilities. Indelibly of our time yet seated in the lineage of poetic discovery, these poems are meant to endure.

Author Biography

Jane Hirshfield was born in 1953 in New York and lives in northern California. Her first book of poetry published in the UK was Each Happiness Ringed by Lions: Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 2005), which draws on her collections Alaya (1982), Of Gravity & Angels (1988), The October Palace (1994), The Lives of the Heart (1997) and Given Sugar, Given Salt (2001). This was followed by four later collections from Bloodaxe in the UK, After (2006), a Poetry Book Society Choice, which was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize, Come, Thief (2012), The Beauty (2015) and Ledger (2020). In 2008 Bloodaxe published Jane Hirshfield's lectures Hiddenness, Surprise, Uncertainty: Three Generative Energies of Poetry (Newcastle/ Bloodaxe Poetry Lectures). Jane Hirshfield edited the bestselling anthology Women in Praise of the Sacred (1994), and co-translated The Ink Dark Moon: Poems by Ono No Komachi and Izumi Shikibu (1988) – another bestseller in the States – and, with Robert Bly, Mirabai: Ecstatic Poems (2004). Her own poetry was translated into Polish by Czeslaw Milosz, who also wrote the introduction to her Polish Selected Poems. She has won numerous literary awards.

Table of Contents

11 Let Them Not Say*15 The Bowl16 I wanted to be surprised.18 Vest20 An Archaeology21 Fecit22 Day Beginning with Seeing the International Space Station and a Full Moon over the Gulf of Mexico and All Its Invisible Fishes23 As If Hearing Heavy Furniture Moved on the Floor Above Us24 Description25 Ants' Nest26 A Bucket Forgets Its Water27 Questionnaire29 You Go to Sleep in One Room and Wake in Another30 Chance darkened me.31 Some Questions33 Today, Another Universe34 The Orphan Beauty of Fold Not Made Blindfold*37 Now a Darkness Is Coming38 Words39 Homs40 She Breathes in the Scent41 A Folding Screen42 Practice43 Cataclysm44 Paint45 Heels46 Cold, Clear47 Capital: An Assay49 Falcon50 Spell to Be Said Against Hatred*53 Advice to Myself54 Notebook55 In Ulvik56 O Snail57 Branch58 Without Night-shoes59 The Bird Net60 Corals, Coho, Coelenterates61 To My Fifties62 Brocade63 Interruption: An Assay65 My Doubt67 My Contentment68 My Hunger69 My Longing70 My Dignity72 My Glasses73 My Wonder74 My Silence*77 A Ream of Paper78 Lure79 A Moment Knows Itself Penultimate81 Bluesh82 Almond, Rabbit83 The Paw-paw84 Musa Paradisiaca85 It Was as if a Ladder87 Like Others88 Husband89 Wild Turkeys90 Nine Pebbles90 Without blinking90 Like that other-hand music90 Retrospective91 Library book with many precisely turned-down corners91 Now even more91 Haiku: monadnock92 A strategy92 Sixth extinction92 Obstacle93 They Have Decided94 Things Seem Strong95 Dog Tag96 Biophilia*99 Amor Fati100 Snow101 Kitchen102 Harness103 Rust Flakes on Wind104 Pelt105 Wood. Salt. Tin.106 I Said*109 Ledger110 In a Former Coal Mine in Silesia111 Engraving: World-tree with an Empty Beehive on One Branch112 (No Wind, No Rain)113 On the Fifth Day115 Page117 My Confession118 Ghazal for the End of Time119 Mountainal120 My Debt125 Acknowledgements

Review

A profound empathy for the suffering of all living beings… It is precisely this that I praise in the poetry of Jane Hirshfield…In its highly sensuous detail, her poetry illuminates the Buddhist virtue of mindfulness. -- Czeslaw Milosz * Prze Kroj (Poland) *From the opening poem, "Let Them Not Say", to the closing, "My Debt", the masterful ninth book [Ledger] from Hirshfield is an account of how "We did not-enough" to save the world. Most poems are no longer than a page, though some are considerably shorter ("My Silence" is only a title). They are set against a page and a half of prose in the middle of the book about "Capital" which, for the writer, is language "as slippery as any other kind of wealth". Through this juxtaposition, Hirshfield urges a reckoning of human influence on – and interference with – the planet. In "As If Hearing Heavy Furniture Moved on the Floor Above Us", she begins: "As things grow rarer, they enter the ranges of counting" and ends, underscoring humanity's obliviousness: "We scrape from the world its... wonder.../ Closing eyes to taste better the char of ordinary sweetness." Hirshfield suggests that people are unable, or unwilling, to comprehend their role in their own destruction: "If the unbearable were not weightless we might yet buckle under the grief." Hirshfield's world is one filled with beauty, from the "generosity" of grass to humanity's connection to the muskrat. This is both a paean and a heartbreaking plea. * Publishers Weekly *Poems of quiet wisdom, steeped in a profound understanding of what it it to be human. * The Scotsman *Her poetry is a rich and assured gift… an extraordinary intertwining of cherished detail and passionate abstraction…The poems' realised ambition is wisdom. -- Alison Brackenbury * Agenda *

Long Description

Jane Hirshfield's urgent new collection is a book of personal, ecological and political reckoning. Her poems inscribe a ledger personal and communal, a registry of our time's and lives' dilemmas as well as a call to action on climate change, social justice and the plight of refugees. The poems of Ledger record riches, both abiding and squandered, and mourn our failures. They confirm, too, the continually renewing gift of the present moment, summoning our responsibility as moral beings to sustain one another and the earth's continuance. Finally, it is the human spirit and the language of poetry - loyal instruments of recognition, humility and praise - that triumph in this stunned, stunning accounting, set forth by a master poet whose voice is tonic and essential, whose breadth of inclusion and fierce awareness rivet attention. Hers is a poetry of clarity and hybrid vigour, drawing deeply on English and American traditions but also those of world poetry. The poetries of modern and classical Greece, of Horace and Catullus, of classical China and Japan and Eastern Europe all resonate in Jane Hirshfield's structures of thought and in her sensibilities. Indelibly of our time yet seated in the lineage of poetic discovery, these poems are meant to endure.

Review Quote

'A profound empathy for the suffering of all living beings... It is precisely this that I praise in the poetry of Jane Hirshfield...In its highly sensuous detail, her poetry illuminates the Buddhist virtue of mindfulness.' - Czeslaw Milosz

Details ISBN1780375123 Author Jane Hirshfield Publisher Bloodaxe Books Ltd Year 2020 ISBN-10 1780375123 ISBN-13 9781780375120 Pages 128 Publication Date 2020-03-10 Language English Format Paperback DEWEY 811.6 UK Release Date 2020-03-10 Imprint Bloodaxe Books Ltd Place of Publication Tyne and Wear Country of Publication United Kingdom NZ Release Date 2020-03-10 Audience General AU Release Date 2020-08-03 Edition Description International ed. We've got this

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