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hanamarma's review against another edition
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
4.75
bribeatris's review against another edition
5.0
Threshold. Liminal. To transform. To be in between the transformation. This book was a masterclass on poetry and life and writing. It’s about what the poets meant when they said that thing and what any of us mean when we say that thing. (The words under the words.) It’s about originality and how none of us really carry it (all influenced and copied but through that is our voice) but also to carry it you must exile yourself. (A lonely path but there is wisdom in solitude) It’s about concentration—that thing that you think you know the meaning of but association has made it meaningless. She gave me a new meaning to the word— a deep focus, it’s about placing your words the way you place your feet when you walk: deliberately I hope, so you don’t stumble and fall. Have you ever noticed if you don’t pay attention you’re likely to knock into things? And this book is about paying attention. To your surroundings, to your body to yourself. But it’s also about forgetting about yourself so you can see past yourself. It’s about how we might never be able to rid of ourselves completely and certainly, we will never get rid of the demons in our heads, the lions, the beasts. Instead, we are taught to live amongst them, we are taught to see what they can show us and teach us about ourselves. Have you stayed silent long enough recently to hear the lion roar? It’s about the lion being shadow work and how every poem has darkness and light in it—it’s what makes it dynamic. There are so many dichotomies in this book which is a reflection of life. All of life is a paradox. But the root of it, what I think Jane was trying to desperately tell us is that poetry is there, all around us. Maybe it is hard to grasp because we are not willing to sit with ourselves, to settle in our thoughts and feelings. It's about seeing past what you see. Its about seeing the mountains in the mountains, do you see them too? No don't try to understand, let go. Freedom is in letting go. Freedom is in abandoning logic and what you think you know. Trust your gut. Close your eyes, hear the rustle of the wind. Forgive me if I sound insane but if a book is a masterclass on life how do you review it?
nwhyte's review against another edition
4.0
https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2949805.html
I'm not hugely into poetry, but I certainly don't dislike it either, and this is a good approachable set of essays looking at what poetry is and what poets do, informed (often convincingly) by the author's Buddhist philosophy. The chapters on translation are particularly good - it's an issue I grapple with daily in my working life, though of course not usually for poetry.
I'm not hugely into poetry, but I certainly don't dislike it either, and this is a good approachable set of essays looking at what poetry is and what poets do, informed (often convincingly) by the author's Buddhist philosophy. The chapters on translation are particularly good - it's an issue I grapple with daily in my working life, though of course not usually for poetry.
zebglendower's review against another edition
4.0
Wonderful collection of essays. Incisive and insightful, not only about poetry, but about art, meaning-making, and the search for truth. Truly worth the read.
battlepoet's review against another edition
4.0
This book was a series of gorgeous stunning series of essays on the nature of poetry. If you love poetry, definitely check this out.
patrick_'s review
4.0
While poetry is the focal point, many of the essays can be applied to writing, words or other creative acts. A lot of good analysis of poems.
danmc's review
5.0
Nine Gates was two solid essays (Poetry of the Mind of Concentration, The Question of Originality) one excellent essay about translating poetry (The World is Large and Full of Noises), and one essay that is among my all-time favorites of all time (Poetry as a Vessel of Remembrance). Also there are 5 filler essays with a lot of Buddhist religiosity and vague paradoxes out of which cloudiness I was unable to retrieve any meaning.
The two solid essays are the most standard, craft related ones. About achieving the right focused frame of mind to write and about how originality is a somewhat slippery concept, and how a poet, especially a new poet, should seek to get other admirable poetry to influence their work. They get off to a good start, but also reveal the theme of Buddhist theology that so weighed down the essays I got nothing from. Hirshfield is obviously devout, but she has the kind of fervor of the convert that makes all interaction fall back to praise of the new religion, just as tiresome from her as it would be from a born-again Christian. Because Buddhism is her new religion there are a lot of koan-like thought experiments and pseudo-paradoxes of the an-empty-glass-bowl-is-actually-full-of-sparkles variety. Assertions to which you reply mentally "yeah, maybe, I don't know. So what?" Skip those essays.
But having gotten the good first two and the mediocre essays out of the way let me talk to you about two essays that justify the entire book to the level of five stars.
About translating poetry, Jane Kenyon has said it is an essential skill for mastering poetic craft. But there aren't a lot of books about doing so. As Ezra Pound created highly praised translations of Chinese poetry without knowing Chinese (and the praise comes even from bilingual scholars), so Hirshfield has translated from Japanese with a friend who was a translator. She has specific examples, advice that draws on her own experience, various options in translation of one poem to show how differently it can be interpreted. Comparison of a direct radical-by-radical literal translation to figurative final translation. And discussion of context and the subtler issues that Hirshfield is best at. If you write poetry, this will convince you to attempt to translate some of your favorites from other languages, and if you do, I think you will be grateful for the spur to action.
Now about "Poetry as a Vessel of Remembrance". This essay is about the development of poetry from oral traditions to today. As guiding images for the discussion she follows the Greek god of memory, Mnemosyne, and of writing, Hermes. The result is bursting with great insight.
Those sentences and phrases are some of what was great about "Poetry as Vessel of Remembrance", but it is also valuable at the paragraph level and at the level of the whole essay. A fantastic essay for inspiring you to think your way to new insight about the sound and text of poetry.
The two solid essays are the most standard, craft related ones. About achieving the right focused frame of mind to write and about how originality is a somewhat slippery concept, and how a poet, especially a new poet, should seek to get other admirable poetry to influence their work. They get off to a good start, but also reveal the theme of Buddhist theology that so weighed down the essays I got nothing from. Hirshfield is obviously devout, but she has the kind of fervor of the convert that makes all interaction fall back to praise of the new religion, just as tiresome from her as it would be from a born-again Christian. Because Buddhism is her new religion there are a lot of koan-like thought experiments and pseudo-paradoxes of the an-empty-glass-bowl-is-actually-full-of-sparkles variety. Assertions to which you reply mentally "yeah, maybe, I don't know. So what?" Skip those essays.
But having gotten the good first two and the mediocre essays out of the way let me talk to you about two essays that justify the entire book to the level of five stars.
About translating poetry, Jane Kenyon has said it is an essential skill for mastering poetic craft. But there aren't a lot of books about doing so. As Ezra Pound created highly praised translations of Chinese poetry without knowing Chinese (and the praise comes even from bilingual scholars), so Hirshfield has translated from Japanese with a friend who was a translator. She has specific examples, advice that draws on her own experience, various options in translation of one poem to show how differently it can be interpreted. Comparison of a direct radical-by-radical literal translation to figurative final translation. And discussion of context and the subtler issues that Hirshfield is best at. If you write poetry, this will convince you to attempt to translate some of your favorites from other languages, and if you do, I think you will be grateful for the spur to action.
Now about "Poetry as a Vessel of Remembrance". This essay is about the development of poetry from oral traditions to today. As guiding images for the discussion she follows the Greek god of memory, Mnemosyne, and of writing, Hermes. The result is bursting with great insight.
Verse, at its most fundamental, is language put into the forms of remembrance. The earliest vessel for holding consciousness that has lasted, poetry is the progenitor of all the technologies of memory to come.
In an oral world, the word is indistinguishable from action itself,...
One might say, then, that the [formulaic metrical phrases used by bards] are the words of oral poetry: words that, taken together, form a specialized kind of language created to fulfill the needs of memorability.
[With the advent of writing] The flowing, present-moment stream of Mnemosyne's unselfconscious recital gives way to the ingenuity of the Trickster, and the mark of Hermes permeates this new way of being in the world.
...the written word makes possible a considered survey of the human mind and its contents: once a thought can be looked at once, it can be looked at twice.
[In written story] The chain of narrative structure can be broken, and thinking is freed from its bonds to time and event.
Mnemosyne shows us how to make thought memorable through the story, image, compression, linguistic structure, and sound; Hermes keeps language flexible and energetic, playful, experimental, free to change.
Those sentences and phrases are some of what was great about "Poetry as Vessel of Remembrance", but it is also valuable at the paragraph level and at the level of the whole essay. A fantastic essay for inspiring you to think your way to new insight about the sound and text of poetry.
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