A review by gijs
Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World by Jane Hirshfield

4.0

Very well written and thought-through meditation on the nature and ways of poetry; a nearly impossible to pin-down (or pen-down?) literary art form. One of my favorite observations;

‘Many good poems have a kind of window-moment in them—they change their direction of gaze in a way that suddenly opens a broadened landscape of meaning and feeling. Encountering such a moment, the reader breathes in some new infusion, as steeply perceptible as any physical window’s increase of light, scent, sound, or air. The gesture is one of lifting, unlatching, releasing; mind and attention swing open to new-peeled vistas.’