Jane Hirshfield

Jane Hirshfield is an American poet who has extensively studied zen and served to translate Japanese poems into English.

Her poems have a modern beat to them, with unusual imagery and metaphor, take the line from A Critique of Pure Reason for example:

A dog catching a tennis ball lobbed into darkness
holds her breath silent, to keep the descent in her ears.

When I understand that, I will come back here and blog about it.

The other lines from the poem are good though, and give a nod to her zen background:

Perimeter is not meaning, but it changes meaning,
as wit increases distance and compassion erodes it.
Let reason flow like water around a stone, the stone remains.

This poem reminds us of the times reasoning and convincing arguments just don't work. They don't apply to reality, they don't always solve arguments.

Hirshfield's title for the poem alludes to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason where he asserts all ideas are presentations of sensory experience, and not pure logic alone. The poem itself sheds light on implications of how we treat people and talk to them. What is it that convinces us so thoroughly that our reality is right? Why don't we empathize first and not enter into an argument? The poem is saying we should emphasize emotional aspects to our thoughts and deductions. Well, I don't know how I feel about that. ;)

Click here to get Hirshfield's book: After: Poems