My Thoughts:
At 480 pages, this book is a semester class on how to read certain American poems. It is a lecture series by professor Hirsch as he first "reads" the original poems then gives his personal and academic essay/lecture on the reading of that particular poem from his lens.
This is not a YA book as is most other books that I review on this blog, but this is a professional development book for teachers who want to remember that our teaching English language arts most likely stemmed from our deep passion for literature. This book will remind us all of that deep passion.
I was especially intrigued about Hirsch's take on Garrett Hongo's "Ancestral Graves, Kahuku" as well as current poet laureate Joy Harjo's "Rabbit is Up to Tricks" mostly because I like how living poets talk about other living poets, most of whom at this level probably at least know each other, and in Hongo's case at least, have spent intimate family time with Hirsch. The Hongo poem, "Ancestral Graves, Kahuku" is actually for Edward Hirsch who accompanied Hongo in mid-June 1986 to his family grave where this memoir-poem comes from.
Hongo is a yonsei (4th generation) Japanese American born in Volcano, Hawai'i and raised in both Hawai'i and Los Angeles. When my parents moved to Volcano, Hawai'i in the 80's, there were two general stores in Volcano village, one being the Hongo store owned by Garrett Hongo's grandfather. The store has been renamed the Kilauea General Store, but the owners still keep the old Hongo Store sign. Like my own personal anecdote to this poet, Hirsch includes his own personal connections in his essays, which is what makes this book a master class in the art of a great lecture series.
There are so many notes that I kept for myself. I think that because Hirsch is also a poet, his eye for a poignant imagery as well as his prose style catches my ear as poetry does.
Garrett Hongo is a poet of historical loss and personal recovery.
Hirsch uses these large hooks like above to go through the individual poems, chunking them into nuggets like a beach comber who finds an interesting piece of sea glass in the sand, picks it up to examine it, then puts it back down. The last image of the poem "Kahuku" ends with "As we move off, back toward our car,/the grim constant/Muttering from the sea/a cool sutra in our ears." Hirsch picks up that piece of sea glass, "a cool sutra in our ears," stating "It is both prayer and injunction." The lecturer surely pauses there before moving on as the reverberation of the sutra vibrates into our breathing.
From the Publisher:
An acclaimed poet and our greatest champion for poetry offers an inspiring and insightful new reading of the American tradition
We live in unsettled times. What is America and who are we as a people? How do we understand the dreams and betrayals that have shaped the American experience? For poet and critic Edward Hirsch, poetry opens up new ways of answering these questions, of reconnecting with one another and with what’s best in us.
In this landmark new book from Library of America, Hirsch offers deeply personal readings of forty essential American poems we thought we knew—from Anne Bradstreet’s “The Author to Her Book” and Phillis Wheatley’s “To S.M. a Young African Painter, on seeing his Works” to Garrett Hongo’s “Ancestral Graves, Kahuku” and Joy Harjo’s “Rabbit Is Up to Tricks”—exploring how these poems have sustained his own life and how they might uplift our diverse but divided nation.
“This is a personal book about American poetry,” writes Hirsch, “but I hope it is more than a personal selection. I have chosen forty poems from our extensive archive and songbook that have been meaningful to me,
part of my affective life, my critical consideration, but I have also tried to be cognizant of the changing playbook in American poetry, which is not fixed but fluctuating, ever in flow, to pay attention to the wider consideration, the appreciable reach of our literature. This is a book of encounters and realizations.”
We live in unsettled times. What is America and who are we as a people? How do we understand the dreams and betrayals that have shaped the American experience? For poet and critic Edward Hirsch, poetry opens up new ways of answering these questions, of reconnecting with one another and with what’s best in us.
In this landmark new book from Library of America, Hirsch offers deeply personal readings of forty essential American poems we thought we knew—from Anne Bradstreet’s “The Author to Her Book” and Phillis Wheatley’s “To S.M. a Young African Painter, on seeing his Works” to Garrett Hongo’s “Ancestral Graves, Kahuku” and Joy Harjo’s “Rabbit Is Up to Tricks”—exploring how these poems have sustained his own life and how they might uplift our diverse but divided nation.
“This is a personal book about American poetry,” writes Hirsch, “but I hope it is more than a personal selection. I have chosen forty poems from our extensive archive and songbook that have been meaningful to me,
part of my affective life, my critical consideration, but I have also tried to be cognizant of the changing playbook in American poetry, which is not fixed but fluctuating, ever in flow, to pay attention to the wider consideration, the appreciable reach of our literature. This is a book of encounters and realizations.”
Publication date: April 19, 2022
Publisher: Library of America
Author: Edward Hirsch
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