Jane Hirshfield (born February 24, 1953) is an American poet, essayist, and translator, known as "one of American poetry's central spokespersons for the biosphere" and recognized as "among the modern masters" who writes "some of the most important poetry in the world today." A 2019 elected member of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...

, her books include numerous award-winning collections of her own poems, collections of essays, and edited and co-translated volumes of world writers from the deep past. Widely published in global newspapers and literary journals, her work has been translated into over fifteen languages.

Life, education, and work

Jane Hirshfield was born on East 20th Street in New York City. She received her bachelor's degree in 1973 from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

, in the school's first graduating class to include women as freshmen, and received lay ordination in Soto Zen at the

San Francisco Zen Center San Francisco Zen Center (SFZC), is a network of affiliated Sōtō Zen practice and retreat centers in the San Francisco Bay area, comprising City Center or Beginner's Mind Temple, Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, and Green Gulch Farm Zen Center. ...

in 1979. Hirshfield's nine books of poetry have received numerous awards, including the California Book Award, the Poetry Center Book Award, and the Donald Hall-Jane Kenyon Award in American Poetry Her fifth book, ''Given Sugar, Given Salt'', was a finalist for the

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'', the ''

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'', and ''

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''. Her eighth collection, ''The Beauty,'' was longlisted for the

National Book Award The National Book Awards (NBA) are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors. ...

and named a best book of 2015 by the ''San Francisco Chronicle''. She has written two books of essays, ''Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry'' and ''Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World''. ''The Ink Dark Moon'', her co-translation of the work of the two foremost women poets of classical-era Japan, was instrumental in bringing

tanka is a genre of classical Japanese poetry and one of the major genres of Japanese literature. Etymology Originally, in the time of the influential poetry anthology (latter half of the eighth century AD), the term ''tanka'' was used to disti ...

(a 31-syllable Japanese poetic form) to the attention of American poets. She has edited four books collecting the work of poets from the past and is noted as being "part of a wave of important scholarship then seeking to recover the forgotten history of women writers." She received a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...

in 1985, the Academy of American Poets' 2004 Fellowship for Distinguished Achievement, and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in 2005. Though never a full-time academic, Hirshfield has taught at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

University of San Francisco The University of San Francisco (USF) is a Private university, private Society of Jesus, Jesuit university in San Francisco, California, United States. Founded in 1855, it has nearly 9,000 students pursuing undergraduate and graduate degrees ...

, The Bennington Writing Seminars, and as the Elliston Visiting Poet at the

University of Cincinnati The University of Cincinnati (UC or Cincinnati, informally Cincy) is a public university, public research university in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States. It was founded in 1819 and had an enrollment of over 53,000 students in 2024, making it the ...

. She was the Hellman Visiting Artist in 2013 in the Neuroscience Department at

University of California, San Francisco The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Francisco, California, United States. It is part of the University of California system and is dedic ...

, and

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

's 2016 Mohr Visiting Professor in Poetry. In 2022, she was the third Seamus Heaney International Visiting Poetry Fellow at

Queen's University Belfast The Queen's University of Belfast, commonly known as Queen's University Belfast (; abbreviated Queen's or QUB), is a public research university in Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom. The university received its charter in 1845 as part of ...

. She has also taught at many writers conferences, including Bread Loaf and the Napa Valley Writers Conference and has served as both core and associate faculty in the Bennington Master of Fine Arts Writing Seminars.Jane Hirshfield profile
Academy of American Poets, accessed January 15, 2007 Hirshfield appears frequently in literary festivals both in America and abroad, including the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, the

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, the

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, Poetry International (London, UK), the China Poetry Festival (Xi'an, China), and the Second International Gathering of the Poets raków, Poland She has received numerous residency fellowships, including from

Yaddo Yaddo is an artists' community located on a estate in Saratoga Springs, New York. Its mission is "to nurture the creative process by providing an opportunity for artists to work without interruption in a supportive environment.". On March ...

, The MacDowell Colony, The Rauschenberg Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center, Civitella Ranieri, and the Djerassi Resident Artists Program. She is also a contributing editor at '' The Alaska Quarterly Review'' and '' Ploughshares'', a former guest editor of '' The Pushcart Prize Anthology'' and an advisory editor at '' Orion'' and ''

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''. Hirshfield served as a chancellor of the

Academy of American Poets The Academy of American Poets is a national, member-supported organization that promotes poets and the art of poetry. The nonprofit organization was incorporated in the state of New York in 1934. It fosters the readership of poetry through outrea ...

(2012–2017). In 2019, Hirshfield was elected to the

. In 2024, Hirshfield became the inaugural guest editor for '' Best Literary Translations'' anthology, published by Deep Vellum.

Poetry

David Baker described Hirshfield as "one of our finest, most memorable contemporary poets" and U.S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan called Hirshfield "a true person of letters". Hirshfield's poetry has often been described as sensuous, insightful, and clear. In the award citation for Hirshfield's 2004 Academy of American Poets' Fellowship, Rosanna Warren noted

Hirshfield has elaborated a sensuously philosophical art that imposes a pause in our fast-forward habits of mind. Her poems appear simple, and are not. Her language, in its cleanliness and transparency, poses riddles of a quietly metaphysical nature. Clause by clause, image by image, in language at once mysterious and commonplace, Hirshfield's poems clear a space for reflection and change. They invite ethical awareness, and establish a delicate balance.

The comment is echoed by the Polish Nobel Prize poet Czeslaw Milosz, who wrote, "A profound empathy for the suffering of all living beings... It is precisely this I praise in the poetry of Jane Hirshfield. The subject of her poetry is our ordinary life among other people and our continuing encounter with everything Earth brings us: trees, flowers, animals, and birds…In its highly sensuous detail, her poetry illuminates the Buddhist virtue of mindfulness." Hirshfield's poetry reflects her immersion in a wide range of poetic traditions, both Asian and Western, interests found also in the essays of Nine Gates and Ten Windows. Polish, Scandinavian, and Eastern European poets have been particularly important to her, along with the poetry of Japan and China. Zbigniew Herbert's poem, "Pebble" stands as a model behind the small studies Hirshfield has labelled "pebbles", included in ''After'' and ''Come, Thief''. Hirshfield's work consistently explores themes of social justice and environmental awareness, specifically the belief that natural world and human world are inextricably linked. Mark A. Eaton noted in ''The

Dictionary of Literary Biography The ''Dictionary of Biography in literature, Literary Biography'' is a specialist biographical dictionary dedicated to literature. Published by Gale (Cengage), Gale, the 375-volume setRogers, 106. covers a wide variety of literary topics, periods ...

'' that "Hirshfield's work recognizes the full breadth and responsibilities of humans' transactions with the earth, not just the intimacies." Donna Seaman, reviewing Hirshfield's ninth collection, ''Ledger'', described Hirshfield's "carefully weighted tone as she reckons with our constant subtraction of Earth's life forces and incessant addition of carbon to our atmosphere, acid to our seas." Hirshfield has become an increasingly visible spokesperson for peace, justice, and environmental issues. In a review of her seventh collection,''Come, Thief'', Afaa M. Weaver wrote that her poems "find a middle ground between the larger landscape of political conflict and the personal landscape of our need to connect with one another." Hirshfield's voice as a spokesperson for peace, justice, and environmental issues has become increasing visible, with her work concluding the Library of America's "War No More: Three Hundred Years of American Antiwar and Peace Writing" and appearing in many other collections of poems of social awareness. An article in ''Critical Survey of Poetry'' (2002) summarized the effect of Zen on Hirshfield's work:

Little of her poetry is political in the usual sense of direct comment on specific issues, but all her work is political in the sense of integrating the stirrings of the heart, with the political realities that surround all people. Undoubtedly, the source for these characteristics of her poetry, and for her very concept of what poetry is, "the magnification of being," derives from her strong Zen Buddhist training. Her emphasis on compassion, on the preexistent unity of subject and object, on nature, on the self-sufficient suchness of being, and on the daunting challenge of accepting transitoriness, as Peter Harris notes, are central themes in her poetry derived from Buddhism. Hirshfield does not, however, burden her poetry with heavy, overt Zen attitudes. Only occasionally is there any direct reference.

While many reviewers mention, even make central, Hirshfield's Buddhism as the prevailing filter of her work, Hirshfield has expressed frustration in multiple interviews with being so labeled. "I always feel a slight dismay if I'm called a "Zen" poet. I am not. I am a human poet, that's all." Lisa Russ Spaar has called Hirshfield "a visionary", continuing: "It is arguable that the riddle, the existential joke of being, of meaning, of Dickinson's "prank of the Heart at play on the Heart," is as powerful a source as song for the lyric poem. Central to Hirshfield's vision is a kind of holy delight that is at the heart of riddles and koans". Other reviewers note the investigative nature of Hirshfield's poems, in which life is approached as a puzzle which is not quite solvable. In a review of ''Come, Thief'' in ''

The Georgia Review ''The Georgia Review'' is a literary journal based in Athens, Georgia. Founded at University of Georgia in 1947, the journal features poetry, fiction, essays, book reviews, and visual art. The journal has won National Magazine Awards for Ficti ...

'', Judith Kitchen wrote "Jane Hirshfield's felt longing elevates description to insight: not self-knowledge, less fleeting than that... something more encompassing, more akin to the indefinable suddenly given expression." For all her focus on insight and the unknowable, as early as 1995, Stephen Yenser noted in ''The Yale Review'' Hirshfield's interest in the empirical. "The probably unspeakeable plenitude of the empirical world: Jane Hirshfield's poems recognize it at every point." In a ''

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'' starred review, Donna Seaman has more recently noted Hirshfield's "meticulous reasoning, including a striking meditation on the paradoxical richness of spareness that can serve as her ars poetica." Hirshfield's poems and life increasingly reflect her long-standing interest in biology, as well as physics and other fields of science. She was the 2013 Hellman Visiting Artist in the Neuroscience department at The

, a program "created to foster dialogue between scientists, caregivers, patients, clinicians and the public regarding creativity and the brain." In 2010, she was the Blue River Fellow in the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest's Long Term Ecological Reflection project, whose goal is to track scientific research and artistic responses to the same sites for 200 years. In 2017, Hirshfield organized a Poets For Science component for the main D.C. March for Science held on Earth Day, April 22, on the Washington Mall. As a main rally speaker, she read "On the Fifth Day", a poem protesting the January 24, 2017, removal of scientific information from federal agency websites. The poem appeared on the front page of the ''

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's'' Opinion Section a week before the March. Working with the Wick Poetry Center based at

Kent State University Kent State University (KSU) is a Public university, public research university in Kent, Ohio, United States. The university includes seven regional campuses in Northeast Ohio located in Kent State University at Ashtabula, Ashtabula, Kent State ...

in Ohio, Hirshfield arranged also for a Poets For Science tent to be part of the teach-in preceding the March, in which scientists and their supporters were invited both to read and to write their own scientifically-grounded poems. Poets For Science activities from the March and into the future are hosted on the Wick Poetry Center's website. Video of Hirshfield's reading at the March for Science. While her work looks deeply at the inner world of the self and emotions, Hirshfield has kept most of the details of her private life out of both her poems and her public life as a poet, preferring that her work stand on its own. Hirshfield's work has been published in ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...

'', ''

Atlantic Monthly ''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher based in Washington, D.C. It features articles on politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 1857 ...

'', ''

The Nation ''The Nation'' is a progressive American monthly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper ...

'', the ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...

'', the ''

Times Literary Supplement ''The Times Literary Supplement'' (''TLS'') is a weekly literary review published in London by News UK, a subsidiary of News Corp. History The ''TLS'' first appeared in 1902 as a supplement to ''The Times'' but became a separate publication ...

'', the ''

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'', many literary journals, and multiple volumes of The '' Best American Poetry'' and

Pushcart Prize The Pushcart Prize is an American literary prize published by Pushcart Press that honors the best "poetry, short fiction, essays or literary whatnot" published in the small presses over the previous year. Magazine and small book press editors are ...

anthologies. Her poems have frequently been read on various National Public Radio programs, and she was featured in two

Bill Moyers Bill Moyers (born Billy Don Moyers; June 5, 1934) is an American journalist and political commentator. Under the Johnson administration he served from 1965 to 1967 as the eleventh White House Press Secretary. He was a director of the Council ...

PBS television specials, ''The Sounds of Poetry'' and ''Fooling With Words''. An interview with Hirshfield on the occasion of the publication of "The Beauty" and "Ten Windows" in March 2015 was published in SF Gate. Extended conversations with fellow poets Ilya Kaminsky (

The Paris Review ''The Paris Review'' is a quarterly English-language literary magazine established in Paris in 1953 by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton. In its first five years, ''The Paris Review'' published new works by Jack Kerouac, ...

), Kaveh Akbar (

The American Poetry Review ''The American Poetry Review'' (''APR'') is an American poetry magazine printed every other month on tabloid-sized newsprint. It was founded in 1972 by Stephen Berg and Stephen Parker in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The magazine's editor is Elizab ...

), and Mark Doty ( Guernica) appeared in conjunction with the publication of ''Ledger'' in 2020

Honors and awards

* The Poetry Center Book Award * The California Book Award * Fellowship, Guggenheim Foundation * Fellowship, Rockefeller Foundation, * Fellowship, Academy of American Poets * Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts * Donald Hall-Jane Kenyon Prize in American Poetry * Columbia University's Translation Center Award * Commonwealth Club of California Poetry Medal * Bay Area Book Reviewers Award * Academy Fellowship for distinguished poetic achievement from The Academy of American Poets (2004) * Finalist, T. S. Eliot Prize * Finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award * Long-list National Book Award * Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets (2012–2017) * elected, American Academy of Arts & Sciences (2019)

Bibliography

Poetry

;Collections * * Winner of the California Book Award in Poetry. * ''The October Palace'' (HarperCollins, 1994), winner of the Poetry Center Book Award * ''The Lives of the Heart'' (HarperCollins,1997), winner of the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award * ''Given Sugar, Given Salt'' (HarperCollins, 2001), finalist for the

National Book Critics Circle Award The National Book Critics Circle Awards are a set of annual American literary awards by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to promote "the finest books and reviews published in English".Profile at Poetry Archive

Profile at Poetry Foundation

Hirshfield on Poetry Everywhere, reading ''For What Binds Us'' at the Geraldine R. Dodge festival (video; 2:17)

Jane Hirshfield reading from new work at the 2010 Key West Literary Seminar (audio; 16:09)

* ttp://www.slate.com/authors.jane_hirshfield.html/ Jane Hirshfield's poems at ''Slate''
Jane Hirshfield's poems in ''The New Yorker''Jane Hirshfield's poems in ''The Atlantic''Jane Hirshfield's essay, "Justice: Four Windows" in the ''Virginia Quarterly Review''

ttp://blog.bestamericanpoetry.com/the_best_american_poetry/2011/09/bouldrey-jane-hirshfield-pt-2.html part 2br>part 3

Hirshfield's interview and reading at the Scottish Poetry Library,spring, 2012

"Why Write Poetry?"
(with Jane Haupt) in ''Psychology Today'', January 2014
Hirshfield's interview with Kaveh Akbar in "Divedapper", March 21, 2016
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hirshfield, Jane Living people 1953 births Princeton University alumni University of California, Berkeley College of Letters and Science faculty University of San Francisco faculty University of Cincinnati faculty MacDowell Colony fellows National Endowment for the Arts Fellows Poets from California 20th-century American essayists American women essayists American women poets American literary editors The New Yorker people 20th-century American poets 20th-century American women writers 20th-century American translators 21st-century American essayists 21st-century American poets 21st-century American women writers 21st-century American translators Poets from New York (state) Writers from New York City American Zen Buddhists American women academics 20th-century American Buddhists 21st-century American Buddhists