Come, thief Poems

Review by Booklist Review

Hirshfield's lucid poems are philosophical and sensuous, concise yet mysterious. Ruefully funny and irreverently reverent. They are also gloriously earthy as she looks deeply at trees, animals, insects, and our own wondrous if betraying bodies. An avidly read poet garlanded with prestigious awards, Hirshfield discerns paradoxical wisdom in gravity, time, and memory, red wine, a worn carpet, and a penny. The lilt and patterns of her language are beautifully osmotic, altering our brain waves and our perception of how all the world's pieces fit together. The poet feasts on the sights and sounds of bees, plums, and young musicians and ponders simultaneous forms of consciousness. Molecules inspire thoughts on matter and the perpetuity of motion and change; evolution's slow parade summons recognition of life's wanting to live. Hirshfield writes with a mystic's joy and holy radar about the visual heat surrounding a person in love and how moonlight builds its cold chapel. Wittily deductive and metaphysically resplendent, Hirshfield's supple and knowing poems reflect her long view, her quest for balance, and her exuberant participation in the circle dance of existence.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2010 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Buddhism and aphorism, outdoor delights and indoor wisdom have all attracted readers to Hirshfield's spare and approachable lines; the poet navigates securely between praise and advice, mostly in clearly quotable form. "Wrong solitude vinegars the soul,/ right solitude oils it." "How happy we are,/ how unhappy we are, doesn't matter./ The stone turtle listens. The famished horse runs." Allegorical scenes like bare stage sets introduce elegant observations in conversational free verse, in words drawn from common American speech: sometimes the results sting, sometimes they end up sweet, and sometimes they end up too sweet, faux-profound ("Hearts stop in more ways than one"). More often, though, Hirshfield (Nine Gates) can speak to many lives in just a few phrases, mixing in ancient fashion the fires of consolation with the lights of warning, as in her three-line poem "Sonoma Fire," which ends on "The griefs of others-beautiful at a distance." Admirers of Mary Oliver, of the early works of Louise Gl ck, and even of Kay Ryan might find more pages to cherish. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

Early in her career, National Book Critics Award finalist Hirshfield (Given Sugar, Given Salt) became interested in Japanese literature. One can see this influence in her latest work, a collection of generally short nature poems with an epiphany in which the poet manages to get to the heart of an experience. The best of the poems examine the complex and often metaphysical relationships between the poet and her surroundings. In Zenlike tones, they notice telling details as experienced in ordinary moments that nevertheless seem connected to the transcendent. Take "The Supple Deer," for instance: the narrator watches deer gracefully jumping through an opening in the fence, noting in an especially resonate metaphor how the deer seem to pour like an arc of water. The poem ends wistfully as the poet wishes to be as "porous" as the deer, allowing the world to pass through her. VERDICT Although sometimes the connections suggested by Hirshfield's metaphors are tenuous, these are mostly powerful poems in which each word adds resonance.-Diane Scharper, Towson Univ., MD (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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"French Horn" For a few days only, the plum tree outside the window shoulders perfection. No matter the plums will be small, eaten only by squirrels and jays. I feast on the one thing, they on another, the shoaling bees on a third. What in this unpleated world isn't someone's seduction? The boy playing his intricate horn in Mahler's Fifth, in the gaps between playing, turns it and turns it, dismantles a section, shakes from it the condensation of human passage. He is perhaps twenty. Later he takes his four bows, his face deepening red, while a girl holds a viola's spruce wood and maple in one -half--opened hand and looks at him hard. Let others clap. These two, their ears still ringing, hear nothing. Not the shouts of bravo, bravo, not the timpanic clamor inside their bodies. As the plum's blossoms do not hear the bee nor taste themselves turned into storable honey by that sumptuous disturbance. "First Light Edging Cirrus" 1025 molecules are enough to call wood thrush or apple. A hummingbird, fewer. A wristwatch: 1024. An alphabet's molecules, tasting of honey, iron, and salt, cannot be counted-- as some strings, untouched, sound when a near one is speaking. So it was when love slipped inside us. It looked out face to face in every direction. Then it was inside the tree, the rock, the cloud. "The Decision" There is a moment before a shape hardens, a color sets. Before the fixative or heat of kiln. The letter might still be taken from the mailbox. The hand held back by the elbow, the word kept between the larynx pulse and the amplifying -drum--skin of the room's air. The thorax of an ant is not as narrow. The green coat on old copper weighs more. Yet something slips through it-- looks around, sets out in the new direction, for other lands. Not into exile, not into hope. Simply changed. As a sandy -track--rut changes when called a Silk Road: it cannot be after turned back from. "Vinegar and Oil" Wrong solitude vinegars the soul, right solitude oils it. How fragile we are, between the few good moments. Coming and going unfinished, puzzled by fate, like the -half--carved relief of a fallen donkey, above a church door in Finland. "The Tongue Says Loneliness" The tongue says loneliness, anger, grief, but does not feel them. As Monday cannot feel Tuesday, nor Thursday reach back to Wednesday as a mother reaches out for her found child. As this life is not a gate, but the horse plunging through it. Not a bell, but the sound of the bell in the -bell--shape, lashing full strength with the first blow from inside the iron. Excerpted from Come, Thief: Poems by Jane Hirshfield All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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