“One breath taken completely; one poem, fully written, fully read - in such a moment, anything can happen.”
Source: Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry
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Jane Hirshfield 6
Poet 1953Related quotes

Shikantaza: Living Fully In Each Moment (page 4)
Not Always So, practicing the true spirit of Zen (2002)


“To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.”

It is psychological time: past and future. Certain things in the past didn't go the way you wanted them to go. You are still resisting what happened in the past, and now you are resisting what is. Hope is what keeps you going, but hope keeps you focused on the future, and this continued focus perpetuates your denial of the Now and therefore your unhappiness. p. 43
The Power of Now (1997)

“or that writing a poem you can read to no one
is like dancing in the dark.”
Source: The Poems of Exile: Tristia and the Black Sea Letters

On how poems might be structured around a political theme in “JERICHO BROWN in conversation with MICHAEL DUMANIS” http://www.benningtonreview.org/jericho-brown-interview in Bennington Review (2018 Oct 27)