The Heart of American Poetry

The Heart of American Poetry, Edward Hirsch (2022, Library of America)

Once upon a time American schoolchildren were expected to memorize nationally-favorite poems (“By the rude bridge that arched the flood,” “Shoot if you must this old grey head” “I hear America singing”). It seems that in those times, more people read poetry for pleasure than we do. But some WWURA members are poets, and many attend poetry readings, or follow the poems in publications they subscribe to. In these troubled days, as Edward Hirsch says, “American poetry springs forward, keeping account, reminding us of our core values and commitments—that underlying promise, that true destiny.”

This quote comes from his recent book, The Heart of American Poetry, in which he discusses forty poems written from colonial times to just yesterday. Hirsch is a poet who has won many awards. His illuminating discussions combine information about the poets’ lives, memories of his own first encounters with the poems, and explanations of how the poems work—why they affect us. He also places the poems in their time and lineage. His view of “our core values” is generous: these are poems about many different subjects, beginning with Anne Bradstreet’s “The Author to Her Book” (1666) and ending with Joy Harjo’s “Rabbit is Up to Tricks” (2008). Some of the poems are very well known, but some will be new to any reader; they are by women and men, people of every color—Hirsch does hear America singing.

His pieces on the individual poems are not long, most of them nine to twelve pages. As the lengths suggest, these are not elaborate or highly technical discussions. They are aimed at ordinary, educated readers like ourselves. If you have any interest in poetry, any warm memories of a poem you once loved, this book might be for you.

A sample from the book:

“Cuttings” by Theodore Roethke

This urge, wrestle, resurrection of dry sticks,

Cut stems struggling to put down feet,

What saint strained so much,

Rose on such lopped limbs to a new life?

I can hear, underground, that sucking and sobbing,

In my veins, in my bones I feel it,—

The small waters seeping upward,

The tight grains parting at last.

When sprouts break out,

Slippery as fish,

I quail, lean to beginnings, sheath-wet.