EDWARD HIRSCH

“The most important thing Edward Hirsch has taught me is that in the best of writing, there is no hierarchy of subject matter — that there is nothing more or less worthy of the writer's consideration, reverence, compassion. In these past weeks my mind has been saturated with his images: of blueberries poured into an iron sink, of a frail, ailing father shuffling down a hallway, of walking home on an autumn day, of two suitcases filled with drawings by children of the Holocaust.” — Jhumpa Lahiri

Edward Hirsch, celebrated poet and inveterate advocate for poetry was born in Chicago, educated at Grinnell College and then at the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a Ph.D. in folklore. He has received a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Ingram Merrill Foundation Award, a Pablo Neruda Presidential Medal of Honor, the Prix de Rome, and an Academy of Arts and Letters Award. In 2008, he was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. His first collection of poems, FOR THE SLEEPWALKERS, received the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award from New York University and the Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets. His second collection, WILD GRATITUDE, won the National Book Critics Award. Since then, Hirsch has published eight additional books of poems and five books of prose, including A POET’S GLOSSARY, the result of decades of passionate study and HOW TO READ A POEM AND FALL IN LOVE WITH POETRY, a national bestseller. A longtime teacher, at Wayne State University and in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston, Hirsch is now president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He lives in Brooklyn.

AUTHOR WEBSITE: EDWARD HIRSCH