After

"Attentiveness is what opens us into a conscious human experience, different from that of a tree or stone.  And yes, I do see the development of a continually deeper and more clarified and refining attentiveness as the path through which art and craft as well as life are more fully realized.  The realm of the poem is a small cosmos in which the large cosmos of our existence is also held.  For me, it's something like the Heraclitean formulation, 'As above, so below' - as in life, so in poems."
- From an interview with Jane Hirshfield.  We have her latest collection, After.

Comments

[eric]

the reverse is also true, "as in poems, so in life." . . . poetry may not have the power to cure the world, but it can and does change lives.