Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry [Paperback]

Jane Hirshfield (Author)

Book Description

Release date: August 26, 1998

A Gate Enables passage between what is inside and what is outside, and the connection poetry forges between inner and outer lives is the fundamental theme of these nine essays.

Nine Gates begins with a close examination of the roots of poetic craft in "the mind of concentration" and concludes by exploring the writer's role in creating a sense of community that is open, inclusive and able to bind the individual and the whole in a way that allows each full self-expression. in between, Nine Gates illumines the nature of originality, translation, the various strategies by which meaning unfolds itself in language, poetry's roots in oral memory and the importance of the shadow to good art.

A person who enters completely into the experience of a poem is initiated into a deeper intimacy with life. Delving into the nature of poetry, Jane Hirshfield also writes on the nature of the human mind, perception and experience. Nine Gates is about the underpinnings of poetic craft, but it is also about a way of being alive in the world -- alertly, musically, intelligently, passionately, permeably.

In part a primer for the general reader, Nine Gates is also a manual for the working writer, with each "gate" exploring particular strategies of language and thought that allow a poem to convey meaning and emotion with clarity and force. Above all, Nine Gates is an insightful guide to the way the mind of poetry awakens our fundamental consciousness of what can be known when a person is most fully alive.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Gary Snyder writes that Jane Hirshfield's essays have "a diamond-hard set of insights to share" about the nature of poetry. Hirshfield approaches poetry from a number of angles and discusses a wide-ranging body of work, including ancient Egyptian love poets, Allen Ginsberg, W. B. Yeats, Emily Dickinson, Stevie Smith, and Li Po. Hirshfield is also a fine poet, and this skill tempers her insights with humility: she knows she is attempting to explain the inexplicable, so she doesn't try to disentangle the mystery. Especially recommended is the engaging "Poetry and the Mind of Indirection." --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

A gifted writer in midcareer, Hirshfield has published her fourth collection of poetry in tandem with a book of essays geared toward the creative writing student. The poems are of the moment?each a single gesture encompassing the dichotomies of presence and absence, life and death, being and not-being?and are heavily influenced by classical Japanese verse Hirshfield helped translate with Mariko Aratani (Ink Dark Moon: Love Poems, by Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu) and the Zen Buddhism she has studied for many years: "I turn my blessing like photographs into the light;/ over my shoulder the god of Not-Yet looks on." The best are tragic in their unencumbered vision of human limitation; in one, the speaker listens to a piano played movingly?indeed, even more so, because it is played haltingly?and is ashamed "not at my tears, or even at what has been wasted,/ but to have been dry-eyed so long." Several of the nine essays in Nine Gates originated as lectures presented at writers' conferences. Clear and methodical?sometimes to the point of tediousness?they discuss the process of poetry with examples from standards like Frost, Yeats, Larkin, Whitman, and a few contemporaries. More individual are the discussions of non-Western verse and aesthetics and the process of translation from Japanese (Hirshfield cannot read Japanese and admits her translations were done cooperatively with a native speaker). In a rare personal confession, she describes herself to the late poet Richard Hugo, whom she did not know: "I don't write much/ about America, or even people. I'd often enough rather/ talk to horses." Indeed, it is the quiet restraint of these writings?poems and prose?that appeals. Recommended.?Ellen Kaufman, Dewey Ballantine Law Lib., New York
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (August 26, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060929480
• ISBN-13: 978-0060929480
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #110,338 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jane Hirshfield is the author of seven collections of poetry, including the newly released COME, THIEF (Knopf, 2011), AFTER (HarperCollins, 2006), which was named a "Best Book of 2006" by The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, and England's Financial Times, and a finalist for England's prestigious T.S. Eliot Prize; GIVEN SUGAR, GIVEN SALT (finalist for the 2001 National Book Critics Circle Award, and winner of the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award), THE LIVES OF THE HEART, THE OCTOBER PALACE, and OF GRAVITY & ANGELS, as well as a now-classic book of essays, NINE GATES: ENTERING THE MIND OF POETRY. She is also the author of THE HEART OF HAIKU, an Amazon Kindle Single exploring the essence of haiku and its 17th-century founding poet, Matsuo Basho, which was named a "Best Kindle Single" and an "Amazon Best Book of 2011."

Hirshfield has also edited and/or co-translated three books collecting the work of poets from the past: THE INK DARK MOON: Love Poems by Komachi & Shikibu, Women of the Ancient Court of Japan, WOMEN IN PRAISE OF THE SACRED: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women, and, with Robert Bly, MIRABAI: ECSTATIC POEMS.

Hirshfield's other honors include The Poetry Center Book Award; fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Academy of American Poets; Columbia University's Translation Center Award; and the Commonwealth Club of California's California Book Award. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Nation, The American Poetry Review, Poetry, McSweeney's, Orion, seven volumes of The Best American Poetry (including the forthcoming 25th anniversary Best of the Best American Poetry volume), and many other publications, and has been featured numerous times on Garrison Keillor's Writers Almanac program, as well as in two Bill Moyers PBS television specials. In fall 2004, Jane Hirshfield was awarded the 70th Academy Fellowship for distinguished poetic achievement by The Academy of American Poets, an honor formerly held by such poets as Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, and Elizabeth Bishop. In 2012, she was elected a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, and also named the third recipient of the Donald Hall--Jane Kenyon Award in American Poetry.

Hirshfield's work has been called "passionate and radiant" by the New York Times Book Review, and After was described in the San Francisco Chronicle's Book Review as evidencing "the grasp of a master" and "filled with somber, judiciously lit treasures." A starred review in Booklist describes "poems of exquisite restraint and meticulous reasoning," while a British magazine, Agenda, states, "The poems' realized ambition is wisdom." The Washington Post describes Hirshfield as taking her place in the "pantheon of modern masters." Never a full-time academic, Hirshfield has been a visiting professor at UC Berkeley and elsewhere, a member of the Bennington College MFA faculty, and has appeared at writers conferences, literary centers, and festivals both in this country and abroad. Her books have appeared on bestseller lists in San Francisco, Detroit, Canberra, and Krakow.

Jane Hirshfield was born in New York City in 1953 and was a member of the first graduating class at Princeton University to include women. After graduating, she did a year of farm labor in New Jersey before moving west in a Dodge van with tie-dyed curtains. She studied Soto Zen intensively for eight years, including three in monastic practice at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center in the wilderness inland from Big Sur, and received lay ordination in 1979. She has cooked at Greens Restaurant in San Francisco, driven 18-wheel truck, worked as the independent editor of several books that have sold in the millions, and spent four years living without electricity. She now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area in a small white house surrounded by fruit trees, a vegetable garden, lavender, and roses, with scientist Carl Pabo.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

47 of 49 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Nine Brilliant Essays December 9, 2000

By James Hiller TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

Jane Hirshfield is either a genius or a fool. To even attempt such an undertaking, to explore the "mind of poetry" is quite an insurmountable task, the Mount Everest of literature. I opt for the former description, based on my reading of "Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry".

Rich, eloquent, heady, beautiful, Hirshfield attempts to explore what I assumed to be an unexplorable realm, the heart and essence of this muse. Each essay is not only brilliant, but manages to autopsy several regions that poetry encompasses in a respectful and honest way. Her first essay, "Poetry and the Mind of Concentration", is a tour de force in and of itself, the rest of the book follows suit. She uses some of the finest poetry at her disposal to bring credence to her commentary.

For a poetry writer, for a poetry lover, if you read Jane Hirshfield's book, "Nine Gates", you'll leave it forever changed in the way you approach the gift of poetry.

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Understanding the Heart of Poetry July 8, 2003

By Mark Forrester

Format:Paperback

Jane Hirshfield's "Nine Gates" is probably the most interesting and insightful book I have read on the art and uses of poetry. While Hirshfield's approach to poetry is very much informed by (and often illustrated through) her knowledge of Asian arts and Buddhist philosophy, one need not be a Buddhist or a scholar to understand and appreciate her vision. Hirshfield is most interested in approaching poets and poetry through the essential work that they perform by helping us to understand the natures of, and the relationships between, the self and the world (that is, community in its largest sense). The book's argument is hardly as abstract or fanciful as this might sound, however. Instead, Hirshfield uses this approach to show how the most basic elements of poetry (rhythm, rhyme, image, and so on) function to help the poem build its meaning and fulfill its purpose. "Nine Gates" is an excellent book to strengthen your ability to read poetry, and to deepen your understanding and appreciation of this vital art.

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Eloquent musings October 25, 2000

By Grady Harp HALL OF FAMETOP 50 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

Jane Hirshfield's "Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry" is one of those books that would serve a very broad audience if only intrinsic worth were the driver for PR. For all the "self help" books that that drop on and off the Best Seller List like theatre popcorn, this sharing of what many would deem an obsolete facet of mental exercise is simultaneously a gift to writers AND a guide to experiencing communication in more ways than poetry. Hirshfield is a gifted poet and her comforting and immensely helpful insights will aid even the most "blocked" poet. She addresses "originality", finding the way toward ethereal concentration, adroitly answers begging questions regarding translation of poems in other languages......all with the most sensitive excerpts of poetry imaginable to illustrate her points. This little tome is not only for the writing poets, it is for those who wish to understand the mystery of the meaning of poetry.