Age in itself gives substance — what has lasted becomes a thing worth keeping. An older poem's increasing strangeness of language is part of its beauty, in the same way that the cracks and darkening of an old painting become part of its luminosity in the viewer’s mind.

— Jane Hirshfield

As some strings, untouched, sound when no one is speaking. So it was when love slipped inside us.

— Jane Hirshfield

Hope is the hardest love we carry.

— Jane Hirshfield

In a room with many windows some thoughts slide past unwatchable, ghostly.

— Jane Hirshfield

It is, of course, we who house poems as much as their words, and we ourselves must be the locus of poetry's depth of newness. Still, the permeability seems to travel both ways: a changed self will find new meanings in a good poem, but a good poem also changes the shape of the self.

— Jane Hirshfield

One breath taken completely; one poem, fully written, fully read - in such a moment, anything can happen.

— Jane Hirshfield

One way poetry connects is across time. . . . Some echo of a writer's physical experience comes into us when we read her poem.

— Jane Hirshfield

Perimeter is not meaning, but it changes meaning, /as wit increases distance, and compassion erodes it.

— Jane Hirshfield

Poetry's work is the clarification and magnification of being.

— Jane Hirshfield

Standing Deer As the house of a person in age sometimes grows cluttered with what is too loved or too heavy to part with, the heart may grow cluttered. And still the house will be emptied, and still the heart. As the thoughts of a person in age sometimes grow sparer, like the great cleanness come into a room, the soul may grow sparer;one sparrow song carves it completely. And still the room is full, and still the heart. Empty and filled, like the curling half-light of morning, in which everything is still possible and so why not. Filled and empty, like the curling half-light of evening, in which everything now is finished and so why not. Beloved, what can be, what was, will be taken from us. I have disappointed. I am sorry. Furthermore, I knew no better. A root seeks water. Tenderness only breaks open the earth. This morning, out the window, the deer stood like a blessing, then vanished.

— Jane Hirshfield