"Poetry is a voicing, a calling forth, words waiting to be vocalized."

Edward Hirsch Literature See all quotes by Edward Hirsch →

React to this quote

More by Edward Hirsch

“Inspiration is inbreathing, indwelling, poetry can never be entirely willed. It may be true a poet is given only a single line but that line is a gift from the unconscious, intution , a perception.”

“Poetry is a form of necessary speech.”

“The poem is an original and unique creation, but it is reading and recitation: participation.”

“Examples of Hirsch poems”

“Extract links Hirsch's 'Poets Glossary'”

“For most of history poetry has been an oral art, it retains the vestiges of orality, an experience embedded in the sensuality of sounds.”

Resonant Thoughts

"I guess the biggest joke of all was that story that got out about "Say it ain't so, Joe." Charley Owens of the Chicago Daily News was responsible for that, but there wasn't a bit of truth in it. It wa…"

— Shoeless Joe Jackson

1887–1951

#writing

"The word must be heard in silence; there must be darkness to see the stars."

— Ursula K. Le Guin

Literature1929–2018

#writing

"Oh for a poet - for a beacon bright"

— Edwin Arlington Robinson

Literature1869–1935

#writing

"The words nearly break my heart, and I feel something crumble inside me. The truth is often a terrible thing, and I wish again that I were someone else. But it is too late now, too late to change anyt…"

— Nicholas Sparks

Literature1965

#love