Poet Jane Hirshfield recited her work in the Harrison Institute Auditorium at the University's Special Collections Library Thursday as part of the Rea Visiting Writer program, an initiative sponsored by the Creative Writing Department.
The Writing Program aims to bring acclaimed writers to Grounds for a week of intensive student workshops and public readings. Hirshfield has published seven volumes of poetry. Her most recent, Come, Thief debuted in August 2011, and her collection Given Sugar, Given Salt was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2002.
I first encountered Hirshfield's work during my senior year of high school. My Advanced Placement Literature teacher at the time frequently declared his undying love for the poet, having met her at a reading during his own college years. I remember being struck by her simplistic, straightforward language and the way her poetry provided bare-bones insight into the complex intricacies of everyday life.
Hirshfield's knowledge of Zen Buddhism, cultivated during her time at the San Francisco Zen Center and three years of study at the Tassajara Mountain Zen Center, is apparent in her work. Her clear, lucid language reflects an intense focus on personal reflection and inner concentration.
At last week's reading, I was pleased to discover that Hirshfield in person matched Hirshfield on the page. Her open, charming persona displayed a deeply centered and self-aware woman. Regaling the crowd with humorous and insightful anecdotes between recitations of her poetry, Hirshfield captivated the audience with her clear reading voice and grounded presence, inviting us all to simply sit back and listen.
Though Hirshfield read selected portions of her earlier works, she mainly focused on Come, Thief - a compelling body of work, focusing on relationships, loss and time. These are themes which are all too familiar to college students stumbling to find our places in the surrounding world.
The poem "A Day Is Vast" reminded me of my own hours spent at Alderman hunched over stacks of textbooks. The lines "I don't know what time is. / You can't ever find it. / But you can lose it" resonated with my personal quest to accomplish and learn everything I want to in my four short years here at the University.
While Hirshfield's prose is both alluring and beautiful in its simplicity, it is the universality of the underlying themes which truly captivates her readers. Her work is neither pompous nor intimidating. Rather, it is welcoming and familiar, relating to its audience through a vocabulary and imagery which resonate deeply with her readers or, as the case may be, listeners. As I left the auditorium in the hustle and bustle of the crowd surrounding me, I found myself wanting to stay and continue listening. I found solace as I realized that my reluctance to leave resembled the lines of Hirshfield's poem "I Ran Out Naked In The Sun": "I wanted more I / shouted More / and who could blame me / who could blame"
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