Sangha of Auspicious Companions

September 9, 2023

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Zen & the Art of Poetry

“It’s my nature to question, to look at the opposite side. I believe that the best writing also does this. Great literature does not take sides with the small-minded. It’s not partisan or narrow. It tells us that where there is sorrow, there will be joy; where there is joy, there will be sorrow. A uni-dimensional poem would be boring. Sometimes the other side is so deeply buried, you really have to part the grasses of the poem to find it, but I would say that in a good poem, that second dimension is always there. There is always something startling and absolutely unexpected, some undertow, some magnetic pull of a fuller truth.” Jane Hirshfield shares more in this interview from 2006. { read more }

Be The Change

For more inspiration, check out Hirshfield’s essay on “Poetry, Permeability and Healing,” here. { more }

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