Jane Hirshfield is a visionary American writer whose poems ask
nothing less than what it is to be human. Both sensual meditations
and passionate investigations of our shared and borrowed lives,
they reveal complex truths in language luminous and precise. In an
era of algorithm, assertion and induced distraction, Jane
Hirshfield’s poems bring a much-needed awakening response,
actively countering narrowness. The Asking includes work from her
earlier retrospective, Each Happiness Ringed by Lions (2005), as
well as drawing upon four later collections, After (2006), Come,
Thief (2012), The Beauty (2015) and Ledger (2020), along with a
selection of 31 new poems. The book takes its title from the close
of one of those new poems: ‘don’t despair of this falling
world, not yet / didn’t it give you the asking’. Interrogating
language and life, pondering beauty amid bewilderment and
transcendence amid transience, Hirshfield offers a signature
investigation of the conditions, contradictions, uncertainties and
astonishments that shape our existence. A leading advocate for the
biosphere and the alliance of science and imagination, she brings
to both inner and outer quandaries an abiding compass: the choice
to embrace what is, to face with courage, curiosity, and a sense of
kinship whatever comes. In poems that consider the smallest ant and
the vastness of time, hunger and bounty, physics, war and love in
myriad forms, this collection brings the insights and slant-lights
that come to us only through poetry’s arc, delve and tact;
through a vision both close and sweeping; through music-inflected
thought and recombinant leap. With its quietly magnifying brushwork
and numinous clarities, The Asking expands our awareness of both
breakage’s grief and the possibility for repair.
General
Imprint: |
Bloodaxe Books Ltd
|
Country of origin: |
United Kingdom |
Release date: |
February 2024 |
First published: |
2023 |
Authors: |
Jane Hirshfield
|
Dimensions: |
232 x 158 x 28mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Paperback
|
Pages: |
368 |
ISBN-13: |
978-1-78037-679-0 |
Categories: |
Books
Promotions
|
LSN: |
1-78037-679-0 |
Barcode: |
9781780376790 |
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