Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry, Essays by Jane Hirshfield (PDF)

Description

A Gate Enables passage between what is inside and what is outside, and the connection poetry forges between inner and outer lives is the fundamental theme of these nine essays.Nine Gates begins with a close examination of the roots of poetic craft in “the mind of concentration” and concludes by exploring the writer’s role in creating a sense of community that is open, inclusive and able to bind the individual and the whole in a way that allows each full self-expression. in between, Nine Gates illumines the nature of originality, translation, the various strategies by which meaning unfolds itself in language, poetry’s roots in oral memory and the importance of the shadow to good art.A person who enters completely into the experience of a poem is initiated into a deeper intimacy with life. Delving into the nature of poetry, Jane Hirshfield also writes on the nature of the human mind, perception and experience. Nine Gates is about the underpinnings of poetic craft, but it is also about a way of being alive in the world — alertly, musically, intelligently, passionately, permeably.In part a primer for the general reader, Nine Gates is also a manual for the working writer, with each “gate” exploring particular strategies of language and thought that allow a poem to convey meaning and emotion with clarity and force. Above all, Nine Gates is an insightful guide to the way the mind of poetry awakens our fundamental consciousness of what can be known when a person is most fully alive.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review “Jane Hirshfield dares to write about the mysteries of art, and she approaches them in a way that feels exactly right to me: plainly, reverently, intelligently. She respects subject matter and gives due weight to both past masters and her own intuition. The result is rare and fine: a collection of essays combining the richness of a daybook with the pointed quality of a good lecture.” — Robert Pinsky, Poet Laureate of the United States”These expansive, fearless essays are on the basics of–not poesy in any small sense–but mind, wit, stalking, silky focus, the eros of knowledge, the steely etiquette of art. For those who want it, here’s guidance toward the power of being in the margin, the calm ease of the center.”– Gary Snyder, author of “Mountains and Rivers Without End””With the exactitude of a surgeon and the sensuous attention of a chef, Hirshfield addresses, essay by essay, the art, craft, and act of making poetry . . . These essays are both brilliantly ambitious–one random passage in her last piece, on ‘writing and the threshold life, ‘ flows 14th-century Japanese poet Ono no Komachi (whose poems she has translated in the past) into Czeslaw Milosz into Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman–and confidently clear.” — “Village Voice” “A cross between a reader’s guide to poetry and a how-to guide for would-be poets, Hirshfield’s collected essays on poetic understanding read like a series of vigorous, well-documented university guest lectures…With her feet firmly planted in both the Western and Eastern canons, Hirshfield delivers a thorough and timely collection on our relationships to poetry, our relationship to the world and everything in between.”– “Publishers Weekly” “It is the quiet restraint of these writings–poems and prose–that appeals. Recommended.”– “Library Journal”[Hirshfield’s] nine essays, or gates” range a wide territory, in often strikingly beautiful language, to consider such objects as concentration, prosody, translation, poetry’s roots as an oral art form, and the importance of shadow to art and spiritual life.”– “Hungry Mind Review””In the outstanding and lucid critical essays in “Nine Gates, Hirshfield proves that she, like all good poets, is a gifted reader . . . Happily, this enlightening volume does exactly what Hirshfield hoped it would: it intensifies our response to poetry, hence to life.”– “Booklist (starred) About the Author The author of five previous poetry collections and a book of essays, Jane Hirshfield has been a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award and England’s T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry, and she is the winner of the Poetry Center Book Award, the California Book Award, and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, the Los Angeles Times, and multiple volumes of The Best American Poetry and Pushcart Prize anthologies.

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐This book addresses the creative art of all kinds of writing, creativity, and poetry in equal parts. “The world in which we exist becomes itself.” A thought-provoking statement about art that brings the reader not only into his or her soul, but into the music of words and images. Outer and inner landscapes become the portrait of the book. Toward what end? To what takes place between writer and reader and into the “experience.” How does one enter a poem or a story? Many questions arise in this book, and Hirshfield is masterful at suggesting answers, revealing secrets, and yet leaving the door open to more questions. She notes that there are “tricksters” within the writer who censor too quickly and mislead. I liked Hirshfield’s insights to the act of writing as “a making, but also a following” into the mystery as it emerges in the process. If you’ve ever been in the process of writing anything and felt yourself wandering, feeling lost in the dark, fear not; Hirshfield says, this darkness is where the true journey begins to discover the original lightness of being. To discover that presence, the secret language, and the pregnant silences, is the path to power. Highly recommended for writers, artists, and students who want a leap of revelation. Paula Cappa is an avid book reviewer and an award-winning supernatural mystery author.

⭐I read this collection of essays about writing poetry on the recommendation of my grad advisor in creative writing, and it is a very interesting exploration of the poet’s process of simultaneously—and paradoxically—both focusing and freeing the mind to achieve the heightened state of awareness and self-acceptance that can result in the formulation of a poem or a poetic insight. Hirshfield is a rarity—a widely recognized and celebrated poet who is NOT a full-time academic. Her essays touch on sources from both Western (European) and Eastern (Buddhistic) poetic traditions of expression, and her explorations of how knowledge of those traditions can be of value to the present-day writer, or scholar, of poetry.

⭐These essays are thought provoking and insightful material for anyone interested in writing poetry

⭐I enjoy writing and reading poetry, and I have read Jane Hirshfield’s compilation of poems, “After”. So it was with interest that I came across this volume of essays recommended when I was looking up something else on Amazon. It is rare that a book receives exclusively 5 star reviews, so I took a chance and got it. I was not disappointed. So, I’m giving Ms. Hirshfield another 5 star review. The essays in this book are simply marvelous. My two favorites were “Facing the Lion: The Way of Shadow and Kight in Some Twentieth Century Poems” and “Writing and the Threshold Life”. If you enjoy writing or reading poetry get this book and savor these essays.

⭐I bought this book after not finding a poetry teacher. It is a must read for those wanting to write poetry as well as those who love poetry. And for all others, after reading this book you will likely be looking to read more poetry.Could not recommend more highly.

⭐Not what I expected. I was looking forward to learning more about spiritual roots of writing-some mysteries that she may have stumbled upon but it was more of a style of a formal lecture and I gave up after the first 1-2 chapters and scanning ahead to preview for signs of any other potential insights of that kind, There were none. I do not fault the author, her approaches or talents. It just wasn’t what I was searching for…

⭐This is my second copy of Nine Gates. In the last five years I’ve worn out my first paperback copy. This is the clearest look at poetry that I’ve found.Now I’ll see if I can wear out the hardback cop of Nine Gates.

⭐At first I rebelled against the author’s devoting pages to a discussion of poetry translation. However, once I dug hard intoher elegant but fairly dense prose, the more I found it fascinating, (including (of all things) certain esoteric aspects of Japanese language and poetry as well as translation.I have begun reading NINE GATES for a second time, and I suspect not for the last. Although scholarly, the book is also moving, touching and definitely inspiring for any artist, poet or not.

⭐… war ein Geschenk und ist gut angekommen (im doppelten Sinne)A delight for mind and heart.

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