The Asking

Jane Hirshfield, born in New York City and a longtime resident of northern California, is the author of ten collections of poetry, including The Asking: New & Selected Poems (US, Knopf, 2023; UK, Bloodaxe Books, 2024) and an earlier retrospective, Each Happiness Ringed by Lions (Bloodaxe Books, 2005). Her 2006 collection, After, was a Poetry Book Society Choice and shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. Called 'one of the most important writers in the world today' (The New York Times Magazine) and one of American poetry's central spokespersons for the biosphere, she is the founder of an online and travelling interactive exhibit exploring the alliance of poetry and science. Also the author of Hiddenness, Surprise, Uncertainty: Three Generative Energies of Poetry (Newcastle/ Bloodaxe Poetry Lectures, 2008) and two now-classic US collections of essays, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry (1997) and Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World (2015), she has edited and co-translated four books presenting the work of world poets from the deep past: the anthology Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women (1994); The Ink Dark Moon: Poems by Ono No Komachi and Izumi Shikibu (US, 1988; UK 2023) and The Heart of Haiku (2011), both with Mariko Aratani; and Mirabai: Ecstatic Poems (2004), with Robert Bly. Her own poetry has been translated into seventeen languages, including by Czesław Miłosz, who wrote the introduction to her 2002 Polish Selected Poems. Recipient of numerous literary awards, an elected member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and a former chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, she has taught at Stanford University, U.C. Berkeley, and elsewhere, and was the 2022 Seamus Heaney International Visiting Poetry Fellow at Queen’s University, Belfast.

NEW POEMS (2023)
Door and Sentence 3
Counting, New Year’s Morning,
What Powers Yet Remain to Me 4
Tin 5
Manifest 6
Solstice 8
Two Versions 9
Today, When I Could Do Nothing 10
Poem Holding a Wristwatch Belonging to
the Brazilian Poet Ferreira Gullar 12
Each Morning Calls Us to Praise
This World That Is Fleeting 13
Two Kerosene Lanterns 14
To Be a Person 15
O, Responsibility 16
[Five Pebbles] 17
Here & Now 17
Words Stop 17
My Failure 17
Chrysanthemum 17
Vestment 17
A Day Just Ends 18
I asked to be lush, to be green. 19
“A map grows no trees.” 20
Thermopolium 21
The Difficult Day 22
Poem to Be Written by Magnet in Oil for an Exhibit
at the Museum of Tomorrow in Rio de Janeiro 23
Body, Mind of the Ransacked Thrift Shop 24
Silence: An Assay 25
My Window 26
Invitation 27
Again, I Enter My Life 28
Mosses 30
Letter to Adam Zagajewski 32
Aubade Now of Earth 33
I Would Like 34
I open the window. 36

from ALAYA (1971–1982)
And / Yes in the Fields You 39
December Solstice, ’73 40
Everything That Is Not You 41

from OF GRAVITY & ANGELS (1988)
After Work 45
In a Net of Blue and Gold 46
Invocation 47
To Hear the Falling World 48
Dialogue 49
To Drink 50
Heat 51
Tonight the Incalculable Stars 53
For What Binds Us 54
November, Remembering Voltaire 55
Evening, Late Fall 56
Osiris 57
Woman in Red Coat 58
Justice Without Passion 59
October 20, 1983 60
On Reading Brecht 61
With Singing and Banners 62
A Story 63
Childhood, Horses, Rain 64
Autumn Quince 65

from THE OCTOBER PALACE (1994)
The Kingdom 69
Each Step 70
1973 71
The Groundfall Pear 73
Percolation 74
Happiness 75
The Love of Aged Horses 76
Inspiration 77
History as the Painter Bonnard 78
Narcissus: Tel Aviv, Baghdad, California, February 1991 79
The Wedding 80
A Plenitude 82
The Door 83
Floor 84
“Perceptibility Is a Kind of Attentiveness” 85
This Love 87
Even the Vanishing Housed 88
A Sweetening All Around Me as It Falls 89
Leaving the October Palace 90
Autumn 91
Ripeness 92
The Weighing 93
The Gods Are Not Large 94
The Heart as Origami 95
Meeting the Light Completely 96
Within This Tree 97
The Task 98
Empedocles’ Physics 99
The Stone of Heaven 100

from THE LIVES OF THE HEART (1988)
Secretive Heart 105
Mule Heart 106
Salt Heart 107
On the Beach 108
Heart Starting and Stopping in the Late Dark 109
The World Loved by Moonlight 110
The Adamantine Perfection of Desire 111
Standing Deer 112
Changing Everything 113
Da Capo 114
Not-Yet 115
Three Foxes by the Edge of the Field at Twilight 116
Leaf 117
Hope and Love 118
Late Prayer 119
Each Happiness Ringed by Lions 120
Each Moment a White Bull Steps Shining into the World 121
Orange Oil in Darkness 122
The Sweetness of Apples, of Figs 123
Wine Grapes for Breakfast 124
Bees 125
Lake and Maple 126
Milk 128
Jasmine 130
The Poet 131
Blind Fate Walking on Ice in the Woods 132
The Bearded Woman 133
Spell for Inviting-in the New Soul 134
Spell to Be Said Before Sleep 135
Spell to Be Said Upon Departure 136
Three Times My Life Has Opened 137

from GIVEN SUGAR, GIVEN SALT (2001)
The Envoy 141
Red Berries 142
Apple 143
A Hand 144
Habit 145
Rebus 146
Waking This Morning Dreamless After Long Sleep 147
Bobcats, Beetles, Owls 148
Great Powers Once Raged Through Your Body 149
The Contract 150
Red Onion, Cherries, Boiling Potatoes, Milk— 151
This Was Once a Love Poem 152
Button 153
Inflection Finally Ungraspable by Grammar 154
In Praise of Coldness 155
Happiness Is Harder 156
Like an Ant Carrying Her Bits of Leaf or Sand 157
Pillow 158
Poem with Two Endings 160
“Nothing Lasts” 161
Self-Portrait in a Borrowed Cabin 162
All Evening, Each Time I Started to Say It 163
Ladder 164
Balance 165
A Cedary Fragrance 166
Identity 167
For Horses, Horseflies 168
Moment 169
Speed and Perfection 170
Optimism 171
Tree 172
The Silence 173
Sleep 175
Ink 178
Metempsychosis 181

from AFTER (2006)
After Long Silence 185
Theology 186
Pyracantha and Plum 187
Dog and Bear 188
The Woodpecker Keeps Returning 189
Vilnius 190
To Judgment: An Assay 191
To Opinion: An Assay 193
Ryoanji: An Assay 194
“Of”: An Assay 194
To Speech: An Assay 195
Possibility: An Assay 198
Against Certainty 199
Those Who Cannot Act 200
The Double 201
I Imagine Myself in Time 202
Late Self-Portrait by Rembrandt 203
The Heat of Autumn 204
Burlap Sack 205
The Monk Stood Beside a Wheelbarrow 206
[Ten Pebbles] 207
Global Warming 207
The Complaint 207
Maple 207
Lemon 207
Tool Use in Animals 207
To Sneezing 208
Why Bodhidharma Went to Motel 6 208
A Class Almost Empty 208
Sentence 208
Red Scarf 209
In a Room with Five People, Six Griefs 210
“It is Night. It is Very Dark.” 211
The Promise 212
The Bell Zygmunt 213
The Dead Do Not Want Us Dead 214
It Was Like This: You Were Happy 215

from COME, THIEF (2011)
French Horn 219
First Light Edging Cirrus 220
The Decision 221
Vinegar and Oil 222
Narrowness 223
Sheep 224
Perishable, It Said 225
Love in August 226
Bruises 227
The Promise 228
China 229
If Truth Is the Lure, Humans Are Fishes 230
Seawater Stiffens Cloth 231
Washing Doorknobs 232
Heat and Desperation 233
Alzheimer’s 234
Green-Striped Melons 235
All the Difficult Hours and Minutes 236
The Present 237
[Thirteen Pebbles] 238
Like Moonlight Seen in a Well 238
Mountain and Mouse 238
Memorial 238
Everything Has Two Endings 238
The Cloudy Vase 238
The Lost Love Poems of Sappho 239
It Must Be Leaves 239
The Perfection of Loss 239
The Visible Heat 240
Rainstorm Visibly Shining in the Left-out Spoon of a Leaf 240
Sonoma Fire 240
Night and Day 240
Opening the Hands Between Here and Here 241
A Blessing for Wedding 242
Come, Thief 242
For the Lobaria, Usnea, Witches’ Hair, Map Lichen, Beard
Lichen, Ground Lichen, Shield Lichen 243
A Small-Sized Mystery 244
Contentment 245
The Egg Had Frozen, an Accident.
I Thought of My Life. 246
The Kind Man 247
A Day Is Vast 248
Stone and Knife 249
Pompeii 250
Suitcase 251
My Luck 252
A Hand Is Shaped for What It Holds or Makes 253
I Ran Out Naked in the Sun 254
The Supple Deer 255

from THE BEAUTY (2015)
Fado 259
My Skeleton 260
My Proteins 262
My Species 264
My Eyes 265
My Weather 266
My Life Was the Size of My Life 267
Many-Roofed Building in Moonlight 268
Things Keep Sorting Themselves 269
A Cottony Fate 270
I Wanted Only a Little 271
February 29 272
As a Hammer Speaks to a Nail 273
[Nine Pebbles] 274
I Sat in the Sun 274
The Woman, the Tiger 274
I Know You Think I’ve Forgotten 274
Still Life 274
Quartz Clock 274
Humbling: An Assay 275
Away from Home, I Thought of the Exiled Poets 275
Two Linen Handkerchiefs 275
Anywhere You Look 275
This Morning, I Wanted Four Legs 276
Works & Loves 277
A Chair in Snow 279
Like the Small Hole by the Path-Side
Something Lives In 280
In a Kitchen Where Mushrooms Were Washed 281
All Souls 282
Zero Plus Anything Is a World 283
Entanglement 284
Like Two Negative Numbers Multiplied by Rain 286

from LEDGER (2020)
Let Them Not Say 289
The Bowl 290
As If Hearing Heavy Furniture Moved on the Floor
Above Us 291
Ants’ Nest 292
Today, Another Universe 293
Cataclysm 294
Fecit 295
Day Beginning with Seeing the International Space
Station and a Full Moon over the Gulf of Mexico
and All Its Invisible Fishes 296
Practice 297
Words 298
She Breathes in the Scent 299
Engraving: World-Tree with an Empty Beehive
on One Branch 300
Now a Darkness Is Coming 301
My Doubt 302
I wanted to be surprised. 304
Vest 306
Brocade 308
Chance darkened me. 309
Branch 310
In Ulvik 311
Advice to Myself 312
A Ream of Paper 313
The Paw-Paw 314
Like Others 315
[Ten Pebbles] 316
My Longing 316
My Hunger 316
My Contentment 316
Wild Turkeys 316
Library Book with Many Precisely Turned-down Corners 317
O Snail 317
A Strategy 317
Sixth Extinction 317
Biophilia 317
Obstacle 317
The Little Soul Poems 318
Amor Fati 318
Kitchen 318
Snow 319
Harness 319
Pelt 319
Rust Flakes on Wind 320
Wood. Salt. Tin. 320
I Said 321
Ledger 322
On the Fifth Day 323
(No Wind, No Rain) 324
Ghazal for the End of Time 325
Mountainal 326
My Debt 327

Acknowledgments 331
Index of titles 333
Biographical note 341