The Asking: New & Selected Poems

Jane Hirshfield is a visionary American writer whose poems ask nothing less than what it is to be human. Both sensual meditations and passionate investigations of our shared and borrowed lives, they reveal complex truths in language luminous and precise. In an era of algorithm, assertion and induced distraction, Jane Hirshfield’s poems bring a much-needed awakening response, actively countering narrowness. The Asking includes work from her earlier retrospective, Each Happiness Ringed by Lions (2005), as well as drawing upon four later collections, After (2006), Come, Thief (2012), The Beauty (2015) and Ledger (2020), along with a selection of 29 new poems. It is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. The book takes its title from the close of one of those new poems: ‘don’t despair of this falling world, not yet / didn’t it give you the asking’. Interrogating language and life, pondering beauty amid bewilderment and transcendence amid transience, Hirshfield offers a signature investigation of the conditions, contradictions, uncertainties and astonishments that shape our existence. A leading advocate for the biosphere and the alliance of science and imagination, she brings to both inner and outer quandaries an abiding compass: the choice to embrace what is, to face with courage, curiosity, and a sense of kinship whatever comes. In poems that consider the smallest ant and the vastness of time, hunger and bounty, physics, war and love in myriad forms, this collection brings the insights and slant-lights that come to us only through poetry’s arc, delve and tact; through a vision both close and sweeping; through music-inflected thought and recombinant leap. With its quietly magnifying brushwork and numinous clarities, The Asking expands our awareness of both breakage’s grief and the possibility for repair.

Table of Contents:
NEW POEMS (2023) Door and Sentence 3 Counting, New Year’s Morning, What Powers Yet Remain to Me 4 Tin 5 Manifest 6 Solstice 8 Two Versions 9 Today, When I Could Do Nothing 10 Poem Holding a Wristwatch Belonging to the Brazilian Poet Ferreira Gullar 12 Each Morning Calls Us to Praise This World That Is Fleeting 13 Two Kerosene Lanterns 14 To Be a Person 15 O, Responsibility 16 [Five Pebbles] 17 Here & Now 17 Words Stop 17 My Failure 17 Chrysanthemum 17 Vestment 17 A Day Just Ends 18 I asked to be lush, to be green. 19 “A map grows no trees.” 20 Thermopolium 21 The Difficult Day 22 Poem to Be Written by Magnet in Oil for an Exhibit at the Museum of Tomorrow in Rio de Janeiro 23 Body, Mind of the Ransacked Thrift Shop 24 Silence: An Assay 25 My Window 26 Invitation 27 Again, I Enter My Life 28 Mosses 30 Letter to Adam Zagajewski 32 Aubade Now of Earth 33 I Would Like 34 I open the window. 36 from ALAYA (1971–1982) And / Yes in the Fields You 39 December Solstice, ’73 40 Everything That Is Not You 41 from OF GRAVITY & ANGELS (1988) After Work 45 In a Net of Blue and Gold 46 Invocation 47 To Hear the Falling World 48 Dialogue 49 To Drink 50 Heat 51 Tonight the Incalculable Stars 53 For What Binds Us 54 November, Remembering Voltaire 55 Evening, Late Fall 56 Osiris 57 Woman in Red Coat 58 Justice Without Passion 59 October 20, 1983 60 On Reading Brecht 61 With Singing and Banners 62 A Story 63 Childhood, Horses, Rain 64 Autumn Quince 65 from THE OCTOBER PALACE (1994) The Kingdom 69 Each Step 70 1973 71 The Groundfall Pear 73 Percolation 74 Happiness 75 The Love of Aged Horses 76 Inspiration 77 History as the Painter Bonnard 78 Narcissus: Tel Aviv, Baghdad, California, February 1991 79 The Wedding 80 A Plenitude 82 The Door 83 Floor 84 “Perceptibility Is a Kind of Attentiveness” 85 This Love 87 Even the Vanishing Housed 88 A Sweetening All Around Me as It Falls 89 Leaving the October Palace 90 Autumn 91 Ripeness 92 The Weighing 93 The Gods Are Not Large 94 The Heart as Origami 95 Meeting the Light Completely 96 Within This Tree 97 The Task 98 Empedocles’ Physics 99 The Stone of Heaven 100 from THE LIVES OF THE HEART (1988) Secretive Heart 105 Mule Heart 106 Salt Heart 107 On the Beach 108 Heart Starting and Stopping in the Late Dark 109 The World Loved by Moonlight 110 The Adamantine Perfection of Desire 111 Standing Deer 112 Changing Everything 113 Da Capo 114 Not-Yet 115 Three Foxes by the Edge of the Field at Twilight 116 Leaf 117 Hope and Love 118 Late Prayer 119 Each Happiness Ringed by Lions 120 Each Moment a White Bull Steps Shining into the World 121 Orange Oil in Darkness 122 The Sweetness of Apples, of Figs 123 Wine Grapes for Breakfast 124 Bees 125 Lake and Maple 126 Milk 128 Jasmine 130 The Poet 131 Blind Fate Walking on Ice in the Woods 132 The Bearded Woman 133 Spell for Inviting-in the New Soul 134 Spell to Be Said Before Sleep 135 Spell to Be Said Upon Departure 136 Three Times My Life Has Opened 137 from GIVEN SUGAR, GIVEN SALT (2001) The Envoy 141 Red Berries 142 Apple 143 A Hand 144 Habit 145 Rebus 146 Waking This Morning Dreamless After Long Sleep 147 Bobcats, Beetles, Owls 148 Great Powers Once Raged Through Your Body 149 The Contract 150 Red Onion, Cherries, Boiling Potatoes, Milk— 151 This Was Once a Love Poem 152 Button 153 Inflection Finally Ungraspable by Grammar 154 In Praise of Coldness 155 Happiness Is Harder 156 Like an Ant Carrying Her Bits of Leaf or Sand 157 Pillow 158 Poem with Two Endings 160 “Nothing Lasts” 161 Self-Portrait in a Borrowed Cabin 162 All Evening, Each Time I Started to Say It 163 Ladder 164 Balance 165 A Cedary Fragrance 166 Identity 167 For Horses, Horseflies 168 Moment 169 Speed and Perfection 170 Optimism 171 Tree 172 The Silence 173 Sleep 175 Ink 178 Metempsychosis 181 from AFTER (2006) After Long Silence 185 Theology 186 Pyracantha and Plum 187 Dog and Bear 188 The Woodpecker Keeps Returning 189 Vilnius 190 To Judgment: An Assay 191 To Opinion: An Assay 193 Ryoanji: An Assay 194 “Of”: An Assay 194 To Speech: An Assay 195 Possibility: An Assay 198 Against Certainty 199 Those Who Cannot Act 200 The Double 201 I Imagine Myself in Time 202 Late Self-Portrait by Rembrandt 203 The Heat of Autumn 204 Burlap Sack 205 The Monk Stood Beside a Wheelbarrow 206 [Ten Pebbles] 207 Global Warming 207 The Complaint 207 Maple 207 Lemon 207 Tool Use in Animals 207 To Sneezing 208 Why Bodhidharma Went to Motel 6 208 A Class Almost Empty 208 Sentence 208 Red Scarf 209 In a Room with Five People, Six Griefs 210 “It is Night. It is Very Dark.” 211 The Promise 212 The Bell Zygmunt 213 The Dead Do Not Want Us Dead 214 It Was Like This: You Were Happy 215 from COME, THIEF (2011) French Horn 219 First Light Edging Cirrus 220 The Decision 221 Vinegar and Oil 222 Narrowness 223 Sheep 224 Perishable, It Said 225 Love in August 226 Bruises 227 The Promise 228 China 229 If Truth Is the Lure, Humans Are Fishes 230 Seawater Stiffens Cloth 231 Washing Doorknobs 232 Heat and Desperation 233 Alzheimer’s 234 Green-Striped Melons 235 All the Difficult Hours and Minutes 236 The Present 237 [Thirteen Pebbles] 238 Like Moonlight Seen in a Well 238 Mountain and Mouse 238 Memorial 238 Everything Has Two Endings 238 The Cloudy Vase 238 The Lost Love Poems of Sappho 239 It Must Be Leaves 239 The Perfection of Loss 239 The Visible Heat 240 Rainstorm Visibly Shining in the Left-out Spoon of a Leaf 240 Sonoma Fire 240 Night and Day 240 Opening the Hands Between Here and Here 241 A Blessing for Wedding 242 Come, Thief 242 For the Lobaria, Usnea, Witches’ Hair, Map Lichen, Beard Lichen, Ground Lichen, Shield Lichen 243 A Small-Sized Mystery 244 Contentment 245 The Egg Had Frozen, an Accident. I Thought of My Life. 246 The Kind Man 247 A Day Is Vast 248 Stone and Knife 249 Pompeii 250 Suitcase 251 My Luck 252 A Hand Is Shaped for What It Holds or Makes 253 I Ran Out Naked in the Sun 254 The Supple Deer 255 from THE BEAUTY (2015) Fado 259 My Skeleton 260 My Proteins 262 My Species 264 My Eyes 265 My Weather 266 My Life Was the Size of My Life 267 Many-Roofed Building in Moonlight 268 Things Keep Sorting Themselves 269 A Cottony Fate 270 I Wanted Only a Little 271 February 29 272 As a Hammer Speaks to a Nail 273 [Nine Pebbles] 274 I Sat in the Sun 274 The Woman, the Tiger 274 I Know You Think I’ve Forgotten 274 Still Life 274 Quartz Clock 274 Humbling: An Assay 275 Away from Home, I Thought of the Exiled Poets 275 Two Linen Handkerchiefs 275 Anywhere You Look 275 This Morning, I Wanted Four Legs 276 Works & Loves 277 A Chair in Snow 279 Like the Small Hole by the Path-Side Something Lives In 280 In a Kitchen Where Mushrooms Were Washed 281 All Souls 282 Zero Plus Anything Is a World 283 Entanglement 284 Like Two Negative Numbers Multiplied by Rain 286 from LEDGER (2020) Let Them Not Say 289 The Bowl 290 As If Hearing Heavy Furniture Moved on the Floor Above Us 291 Ants’ Nest 292 Today, Another Universe 293 Cataclysm 294 Fecit 295 Day Beginning with Seeing the International Space Station and a Full Moon over the Gulf of Mexico and All Its Invisible Fishes 296 Practice 297 Words 298 She Breathes in the Scent 299 Engraving: World-Tree with an Empty Beehive on One Branch 300 Now a Darkness Is Coming 301 My Doubt 302 I wanted to be surprised. 304 Vest 306 Brocade 308 Chance darkened me. 309 Branch 310 In Ulvik 311 Advice to Myself 312 A Ream of Paper 313 The Paw-Paw 314 Like Others 315 [Ten Pebbles] 316 My Longing 316 My Hunger 316 My Contentment 316 Wild Turkeys 316 Library Book with Many Precisely Turned-down Corners 317 O Snail 317 A Strategy 317 Sixth Extinction 317 Biophilia 317 Obstacle 317 The Little Soul Poems 318 Amor Fati 318 Kitchen 318 Snow 319 Harness 319 Pelt 319 Rust Flakes on Wind 320 Wood. Salt. Tin. 320 I Said 321 Ledger 322 On the Fifth Day 323 (No Wind, No Rain) 324 Ghazal for the End of Time 325 Mountainal 326 My Debt 327 Acknowledgments 331 Index of titles 333 Biographical note 341

About the Author :
Jane Hirshfield Her honours include fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations and from the Academy of American Poets, the Poetry Center Book Award and the California Book Award. In the UK, her collection After, a Poetry Book Society Choice, was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize in 2016. A former chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2019. She lives in northern California.

Review :
Jane Hirshfield’s poems often feel like whole landscapes, graciously embracing the widest view and the tiniest sequins at once . . . Her longtime practice of Soto Zen Buddhism and her commitments to scientific knowledge and respect blend to create some of the most important poetry in the world today Hirshfield’s writing is always sensuous and focused: at the same time, her Zen-influenced deep absorption in things seen and sensed is often unsettled by a further, philosophical line of inquiry. This leads to new insights, but not necessarily an easy resolution. The most important measure of anything is its meaning... Hirshfield perfectly captures our individual sense of lostness, faced with undeniable catastrophe, while invoking our collective responsibility.