Edward Hirsch

Edward Hirsch. Courtesy University of Houston.

Edward Hirsch (born January 20, 1950) is an American poet, academic, and literary critic, who wrote a national bestseller about reading poetry.

Life

Hirsch was born in Chicago. He had a childhood involvement with poetry, which he later explored at Grinnell College and at the University of Pennsylvania, where he received a Ph.D. in folklore.

Hirsch was a professor of English at Wayne State University. In 1985, he joined the faculty at the University of Houston, where he spent 17 years as a professor in the creative writing program and department of English. He was appointed the 4th president of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation on September 3, 2002.

Hirsch is a well-known advocate for poetry whose essays have been published in the American Poetry Review, The New York Times Book Review, The New York Review of Books, and elsewhere. He wrote a weekly column on poetry for The Washington Post Book World from 2002 to 2005, which resulted in his 2006 book, Poet’s Choice.

Hirsch’s book, How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry (1999), was a surprise bestseller, and remains in print through multiple printings. His other prose books include Responsive Reading (1999) and The Demon and the Angel: Searching for the source of artistic inspiration (2002). He is the editor of Transforming Vision: Writers on art (1994), Theodore Roethke’s Selected Poems (2005) and To a Nightingale (2007), and the co-editor of A William Maxwell Portrait: Memories and appreciations and The Making of a Sonnet: A Norton anthology (2008). He also edits the series “The Writer’s World” (Trinity University Press). He is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

He has published 8 books of poems, including The Living Fire: New and selected poems (2010), which brings together 35 years of work.

Recognition

Hirsch's st collection of poems, For the Sleepwalkers, received the Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets and the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award from New York University. His second book, Wild Gratitude, received the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1986. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1985 and a five-year MacArthur Fellowship in 1997. He received the William Park Riley Prize from the Modern Language Association for the best scholarly essay in PMLA for the year 1991. He has also received an Ingram Merrill Foundation Award, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, a Pablo Neruda Presidential Medal of Honor, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature. He holds 7 honorary degrees.

Billy Collins included Hirsch's poem, "Fast Break," in his 2003 anthology, Poetry 180.

Publications

Poetry

• For the Sleepwalkers. New York: Knopf, 1981.
• Wild Gratitude. New York: Knopf, 1986.
• The Night Parade. New York: Knopf, 1989.
• Earthly Measures. New York: Knopf, 1994. ISBN 0-679-76566-2
• On Love. New York: Knopf, 1998.
• Lay Back the Darkness. New York: Knopf, 2003. ISBN 0-375-41521-1
• Special Orders. New York: Knopf, 2008. ISBN 0-307-26681-8
• The Living Fire: New and Selected oems, 1972-2010. New York: Knopf, 2010.

Non-fiction

• How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999. ISBN 0-15-100419-6
• Responsive Reading. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1999.
• The Demon and the Angel: Searching for the source of artistic expression. New York: Harcourt Brace, 2002.
• Poet's Choice. New York: Harcourt, 2006. ISBN 0-15-101356-X

Edited

• Transforming Vision: Writers on art (selected & introduced by Hirsch). Boston: Little, Brown, 1994. ISBN 0-8212-2126-4

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy the Poetry Foundation.

Audio / video

Edward Hirsch reading two poems at the 2008 Dodge Poetry Festival

• Edward Hirsch (cassette). Kansas City, MO: New Letters, 1985.
• Edward Hirsch (cassette). Washington, D.C. : WAMU / American University, 2002.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

• List of U.S. poets
• List of literary critics

External links

Poems

• "https://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/109.html Fast Break]" at Poetry 180
• Edward Hirsch profile & 7 poems at the Academy of American Poets
• Edward Hirsch b. 1950 at the Poetry Foundation - biography and poems
• Poetry

Audio / video

• Edward Hirsch at YouTube
• Interview with Ramona Koval, The Book Show ABC Radio National, on "The Living Fire", 5 May 2010
• Interview with Edward Hirsch at BigThink.com February 25 2010, 34 mins, video.
• A Poet on Losing His Son, interview at NPR

Books

• Edward Hirsch at Amazon.com

About

• Edward Hirsch, Guggenheim Fellow in Poetry, 1985
• Edward Hirsch, Poet Official website.
• Interview with Edward Hirsch at Nashville Review