Best Sellers:

Best Sellers:

Best Sellers:

Best Sellers:

Best Sellers:

The Asking | Bloodaxe Books
jane-hirshfield-the-asking

Jane Hirshfield

The Asking

New & Selected Poems

Jane Hirshfield

Publication Date : 21 Mar 2024

ISBN: 9781780376790

Pages: 65
Size :216 x 138mm
Rights: World

Poetry Book Society Recommendation

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. 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.

'Jane Hirshfield's poetry emerges from a deep mixing of language, ideas, and sounds that join us, in often unknowable ways, across oceans and centuries … Hirshfield’s poetry is imbued with the lingering aftertaste of yi jin: the unique and lasting emotional and intellectual resonance that is left by a great poem or work of art … Woven from collective traditions and personal insights, her poetry serves as a tether transcending boundaries, bringing us to the deep Pacific Basin of shared poetics.' – Citation from the Zhongkun International Poetry Prize jury

 

‘This book is the summit of all her questions and looking, all her continuing asking [...] Hirshfield is bearing witness, looking outwards beyond herself. Even if you only have time to dip, to pick out a few poems, this collection will repay your efforts. You might even feel that one of the more important tasks on your to-do list is to read the whole volume.’ – DA Prince, The Friday Poem, on The Asking: New & Selected Poems

'Though a lifetime’s experience produces varying (sometimes age-related) subject matter and she experiments with length, line-length, form and approach, certain features persist: a kind of New England candour, precision and mindfulness (including about the natural world). We sense a strong urge here towards ‘wise-saying’, though no pretence of ‘settled wisdom’ – more an invitation to share reflective moments with this incisive, brainy, stimulating companion addicted to ‘asking’. – Dilys Wood, ARTEMISpoetry

‘Hirshfield is a delight of the measured and meditative [...] Hirshfield is a rewarding poet and one with which to take your time. She is as careful on these pages as she is when she reads. There are many recordings online to get the measure of her voice, and this is helpful, but mostly, hold her in your hands and enjoy.’ – Kate Noakes, The High Window, on The Asking: New & Selected Poems

'These poems, new and selected over decades, have not wandered far from their eternal theme of being human. Hirshfield doesn’t veer away but hones in on the minutiae of everyday life [...] The world is heavy but the lightness of being is extraordinary in Hirshfield’s hand. However insignificant we are in size and time, her poems encourage us to live and celebrate.' – Roy McFarlane, PBS Selector, Poetry Book Society Spring Bulletin 2024, on The Asking: New & Selected Poems

'Poised between loss and gain, restraint and directness, Hirshfield’s poems never rush towards closure or pretend to know. Instead, they are oriented towards witnessing and porousness, and dedicated to expressing the questions humanity faces.' – Felicity Plunkett, Australian Book Review, on The Asking

'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.' – Naomi Shihab Nye, The New York Times Magazine

'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.' – Fiona Sampson, The Guardian

‘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.’ – Carol Rumens, Poem of the Week, The Guardian

‘Jane Hirshfield is a poet very close to my heart.’ – Wislawa Szymborska

‘A profound empathy for the suffering of all living beings…It is precisely this that I praise in the poetry of Jane Hirshfield…In its highly sensuous detail, her poetry illuminates the Buddhist virtue of mindfulness.’ – Czeslaw Milosz, Prze Kroj (Poland)

Jane Hirshfield reads seven poems

Jane Hirshfield reads seven poems from Each Happiness Ringed by Lions: Selected Poems (2005) and After (2006): ‘Pyracantha and Plum’, ‘The Envoy’, ‘The Poet’, ‘The Weighing’, ‘Burlap Sack’, ‘Tree’ and ‘It Was Like This: You Were Happy’. Pamela Robertson-Pearce filmed Jane Hirshfield in London in October 2006 when she was visiting London to read at Poetry International. This film is from the DVD-anthology In Person: 30 Poets, filmed by Pamela Robertson-Pearce & edited by Neil Astley (Bloodaxe Books, 2008). 

Launch reading by Jane Hirshfield & Maria Stepanova with Sasha Dugdale

Jane Hirshfield, Maria Stepanova and Maria's translator Sasha Dugdale celebrated the publication of their new poetry books at this online reading for Bloodaxe Books on 19 March 2024. They read live and discussed their work with each other and with the host, Bloodaxe editor Neil Astley. The event also included readings of poems from the new Bloodaxe anthology Soul Feast, also published in March 2024 and which features four of Jane Hirshfield’s poems as well as Sasha Dugdale’s translation of a poem by Elena Shvarts.

 

North America: Alfred A. Knopf

Ireland: Click here to order from Books Upstairs in Dublin

  

BOOKS BY Jane Hirshfield

After

Jane Hirshfield

After

Publication Date : 23 Nov 2006

Read More   amazon.co.uk
Come, Thief

Jane Hirshfield

Come, Thief

Publication Date : 28 Mar 2012

Read More   amazon.co.uk
Each Happiness Ringed by Lions

Jane Hirshfield

Each Happiness Ringed by Lions

Selected Poems

Publication Date : 30 Mar 2005

Read More   amazon.co.uk
Hiddenness, Uncertainty, Surprise

Jane Hirshfield

Hiddenness, Uncertainty, Surprise

Three Generative Energies of Poetry: Newcastle/Bloodaxe Poetry Lectures

Publication Date : 27 Mar 2008

Read More   amazon.co.uk

RELATED BOOKS

Soul Food
The Beauty
Ledger
Soul Feast

Related News & Publicity

News & Publicity


Jane Hirshfield reviews for The Asking

Jane Hirshfield reviews for The Asking

American poet Jane Hirshfield's new retrospective The Asking reviewed in Australian Book Review & online in The High Window, The Friday Poem and London Grip.

Read More  |  View All

Poetry Events


Launch reading by Jane Hirshfield & Maria Stepanova with Sasha Dugdale

Launch reading by Jane Hirshfield & Maria Stepanova with Sasha Dugdale

Jane Hirshfield, Maria Stepanova & translator Sasha Dugdale launched their new poetry books online on Tuesday 19 March 2024. Available to watch now on both YouTube and...

Read More  |  View All

cart
CART
search
TITLE SEARCH

A-Z

AUTHORS

A-Z

CATEGORIES

View Smaller Text