
photo credit: Nick Rosza
Today, I received an innocuous email entitled “workshop packet” from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. The email started with the line, “Recently we sent a letter by regular mail to let you know which workshop you would be in this summer. I hope you have it in hand now, but there’s a chance you’re receiving this email before the letter….” Unfortunately, in Alaska, mail can sometimes be a “little” slow. So, I scrolled down the see if the name of my workshop leader was in the email. Nope.
It was however on the attached workshop packet. My packet was entitled Hirshfield_workshop packet poetry. Yay! I adore Jane Hirshfield. Seriously, she represents what I hope to be some day – a poet that speaks to people’s hearts while remaining true to her own vision of what her life should be. A member of the first graduating class of Princeton to contain women, Jane then took eight years away from publishing poetry to study at the San Francisco Zen Center. The Poetry Foundation quotes her, “I felt that I’d never make much of a poet if I didn’t know more than I knew at that time about what it means to be a human being. I don’t think poetry is based just on poetry; it is based on a thoroughly lived life. And so I couldn’t just decide I was going to write no matter what; I first had to find out what it means to live.”
I pulled out her books to try to decide what to read and take with me this week when I head out to the east coast. My husband laughed at the sheer number of post-it notes fringing the pages of Jane’s poetry collection After and her essay collection Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry. I hadn’t even started stacking up the other books of hers that I’ve read and re-read over the past ten years. Hirshfield was one of the poets that I studied for my critical thesis for grad school.
So, I’m pretty danged excited. Can you tell?
Here’s a poem by Jane Hirshfield from After:
To Judgment: An Assay

When I was in high school, it was difficult to get books of contemporary poetry. I didn’t live in a big city. I didn’t live near a bookstore except for the one in the mall. The library didn’t really have a fabulous contemporary poetry section. And honestly, I don’t think that any of my teachers owned a book of poetry that they might share with me.
I confess that I may appear whiny making this confession – I’m feeling a little beat-up by rejection lately. Earlier this week I received a rejection within 48 hours of submitting a set of poems electronically. The editor said, “I enjoyed reading your poems but I’m unable to use them in the fall issue.” That sounds nice, and I 
This has been a particularly rain summer so far. At this point, we’ve had twenty-six straight days that have been overcast or raining for the majority of the day. So, I’d like to confess that I’m sick of it. Yes, I’ve spent a lot of time reading, weaving, and writing. Yes, these are some of my favorite activities. But, well, I’d like to spend a little time outside as well. Dry time, that is.
