Jane Hirshfield is a visionary American writer whose poems ask nothing less than what it is to be human. Both sensual meditations and passionate investigations of our shared and borrowed lives, they reveal complex truths in language luminous and precise. In an era of algorithm, assertion and induced distraction, Jane Hirshfield's poems bring a much-needed awakening response, actively countering narrowness. The Asking includes work from her earlier retrospective, Each Happiness Ringed by Lions (2005), as well as drawing upon four later collections, After (2006), Come, Thief (2012), The Beauty (2015) and Ledger (2020), along with a selection of 31 new poems. It is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. The book takes its title from the close of one of those new poems: 'don't despair of this falling world, not yet / didn't it give you the asking'. Interrogating language and life, pondering beauty amid bewilderment and transcendence amid transience, Hirshfield offers a signature investigation of the conditions, contradictions, uncertainties and astonishments that shape our existence. A leading advocate for the biosphere and the alliance of science and imagination, she brings to both inner and outer quandaries an abiding compass: the choice to embrace what is, to face with courage, curiosity, and a sense of kinship whatever comes. In poems that consider the smallest ant and the vastness of time, hunger and bounty, physics, war and love in myriad forms, this collection brings the insights and slant-lights that come to us only through poetry's arc, delve and tact; through a vision both close and sweeping; through music-inflected thought and recombinant leap. With its quietly magnifying brushwork and numinous clarities, The Asking expands our awareness of both breakage's grief and the possibility for repair.

About the Author

Jane Hirshfield, born in New York City and a longtime resident of northern California, is the author of ten collections of poetry, including The Asking: New & Selected Poems (US, Knopf, 2023; UK, Bloodaxe Books, 2024) and an earlier retrospective, Each Happiness Ringed by Lions (Bloodaxe Books, 2005). Her 2006 collection, After, was a Poetry Book Society Choice and shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. Called 'one of the most important writers in the world today' (The New York Times Magazine) and one of American poetry's central spokespersons for the biosphere, she is the founder of an online and travelling interactive exhibit exploring the alliance of poetry and science. Also the author of Hiddenness, Surprise, Uncertainty: Three Generative Energies of Poetry (Newcastle/ Bloodaxe Poetry Lectures, 2008) and two now-classic US collections of essays, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry (1997) and Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World (2015), she has edited and co-translated four books presenting the work of world poets from the deep past: the anthology Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women (1994); The Ink Dark Moon: Poems by Ono No Komachi and Izumi Shikibu (US, 1988; UK 2023) and The Heart of Haiku (2011), both with Mariko Aratani; and Mirabai: Ecstatic Poems (2004), with Robert Bly. Her own poetry has been translated into seventeen languages, including by Czeslaw Milosz, who wrote the introduction to her 2002 Polish Selected Poems. Recipient of numerous literary awards, an elected member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and a former chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, she has taught at Stanford University, U.C. Berkeley, and elsewhere, and was the 2022 Seamus Heaney International Visiting Poetry Fellow at Queen's University, Belfast.

Reviews
Jane Hirshfield's poems often feel like whole landscapes, graciously embracing the widest view and the tiniest sequins at once . . . Her longtime practice of Soto Zen Buddhism and her commitments to scientific knowledge and respect blend to create some of the most important poetry in the world today -- Naomi Shihab Nye * New York Times Magazine *
Hirshfield's writing is always sensuous and focused: at the same time, her Zen-influenced deep absorption in things seen and sensed is often unsettled by a further, philosophical line of inquiry. This leads to new insights, but not necessarily an easy resolution. -- Carol Rumens * Poem of the Week, The Guardian *
The most important measure of anything is its meaning... Hirshfield perfectly captures our individual sense of lostness, faced with undeniable catastrophe, while invoking our collective responsibility. -- Fiona Sampson * The Guardian *



Book Information
ISBN 9781780376790
Author Jane Hirshfield
Format Paperback
Page Count 360
Imprint Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Publisher Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Dimensions(mm) 234mm * 156mm * 26mm