Jane Hirshfield is the author of nine books of poetry and two collections of essays, and has edited and co-translated four books presenting the work of world poets from the past. Her books have received the Poetry Center Book Award, the California Book Award, and the Donald Hal-Jane Kenyon Prize in American Poetry. Her poems appear in a wide range of prestigious outlets. A resident of Northern California, she is a chancellor emerita of the Academy of American Poets. She presents her work at literary and interdisciplinary events worldwide. She has authored many books including The October Palace (HarperCollins 1994), Lives of the Heart (Harper Collins 1997), Women in Praise of the Sacred (HarperCollins 1994), Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry (Perennial 1998), After (Harper Collins 2006), Given Sugar, Given Salt (Harper Collins 2001), Come, Thief (Knopf 2011), Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World (Alfred A. Knopf 2015), The Beauty: Poems (Alfred A. Knopf 2015), Ledger (Alfred A. Knopf 2020)
Interview Date: 4/16/2020        Tags: Jane Hirshfield, poetry, pandemic, sheltering in place, illusion of normality, muse, uncertain times, isolation, beauty, suffering, space station, Robert Rauschenberg, refugee crisis, Art & Creativity, Social Change/politics