Edward Hirsch Great Quotations

I come from Chicago, and the landscape of the Midwest has always meant a great deal to me.

I aspire to a poetry of great formal integrity, deep passion and high intellect, and I have many models for how to do that.

There has never been a great poet who wasn't also a great reader of poetry.

The terms of poetry - some simple, some complicated, some ancient, some new - should bring us closer to what we're hearing, enlarging our experience of it, enabling us to describe what we're reading, to feel and think with greater precision.

There have always been great defenses of poetry, and I've tried to write mine, and I think all of my work and criticism is a defense of poetry to try and keep something alive in poetry.

I find great consolation in having a lot of poetry books around. I believe that writing poetry and reading it are deeply intertwined. I've always delighted in the company of the poets I've read.