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April 1: “Self-portrait” by Edward Hirsch
Welcome to poetry month and thirty days of poems from Knopf and its sister imprints. Our first day is devoted to Edward Hirsch, who has just turned sixty, and whose birthday Knopf celebrates with The Living Fire: New and Selected Poems, a volume that provides a rich sampling from his seven collections of poetry to date as well as new poems. Hirsch, also the author of several nonfiction books about poetry, a former editor of the Poet’s Choice column in the Washington Post, an industrious critic and introducer of volumes by poets as disparate as John Keats and L. E. Sissman, is a lively participant in the conversation about poetry, a true ambassador for the art. But his own poems, over the past thirty-five years, are the best of what he has to give us. Here is “Self-portrait,” a frank self-examination that nonetheless touches on his belief that a poem—and the mysterious force of imagination which gives birth to it—can bring us as near to redemption as anything else.
Throughout the month, scroll down for more good things following the poems: links to Edward Hirsch’s tour schedule around the country this month and an interview with Big Think appear below.
Listen to Edward Hirsch reading “Self-portrait.”Audio
S e l f – p o r t r a i t
I lived between my heart and my head,
like a married couple who can’t get along.
I lived between my left arm, which is swift
and sinister, and my right, which is righteous.
I lived between a laugh and a scowl,
and voted against myself, a two-party system.
My left leg dawdled or danced along,
my right cleaved to the straight and narrow.
My left shoulder was like a stripper on vacation,
my right stood upright as a Roman soldier.
Let’s just say that my left side was the organ
donor and leave my private parts alone,
but as for my eyes, which are two shades
of brown, well, Dionysus, meet Apollo.
Look at Eve raising her left eyebrow
while Adam puts his right foot down.
No one expected it to survive,
but divorce seemed out of the question.
I suppose my left hand and my right hand
will be clasped over my chest in the coffin
and I’ll be reconciled at last,
I’ll be whole again.
More about The Living Fire: New and Selected Poems
Watch Big Think’s interview with Edward Hirsch
Edward Hirsch’s full event schedule
8 Responses to “April 1: “Self-portrait” by Edward Hirsch”
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Knopf's Poem-A-Day 2011
April 1: The opening lines of Amy Tan's "I Love a Broad Margin"April 2: Philip Levine's "Unholy Saturday"
April 3: Deborah Digges's "The Coat"
April 4: David Young's "The House Was Quiet on a Winter Afternoon"
April 5: W.S. Merwin's "The Folding Cliffs"
April 6: Cynthia Zarin's "Late Poem"
April 7: Leonard Cohen's "These Heroics"
April 8: Marge Piercy's "Wellfleet Shabbat"
April 9: Anthony Hecht's "Devotions of a Painter"
April 10: Emily Dickinson Letters
April 11: Kevin Young's "Ash Wednesday"
April 12: Edward Hirsch's "Happiness Writes White"
April 13: Amy Clampitt's "Green"
April 14: Walt Whitman's "The Artilleryman’s Vision"
April 15: Wallace Stevens's "A Dove in the Belly"
April 16: James Merrill's "The Candid Decorator"
April 17: Emily Brontë's "No coward soul is mine"
April 18: Julia Hartwig's "Yet We Desire It above All"
April 19: Kenneth Koch's "To My Fifties"
April 20: Stephen Sondheim's "Green Finch and Linnet Bird"
April 21: Stan Rice's "Tornado at Night"
April 22: Kwon Homun's "Two Poems On Fishing"
April 23: Franz Wright's "Rooms"
April 24: Brooks Haxton’s “Three Lilies”
April 25: C.P. Cavafy's "The Mirror in the Entrance"
April 26: W. B. Yeats's "Down by the Salley Gardens"
April 27: Peter Davison's "The Level Path"
April 28: Sharon Olds's "True Love"
April 29: Langston Hughes's "Daybreak in Alabama"
April 30: Farewell, with poems by Jane Hirshfield and Simon Armitage
Knopf's Poem-A-Day 2010
April 1: Edward Hirsch’s “Self-portrait”April 2: Marge Piercy’s “Seven Horses”
April 3: Dan Chiasson’s “Banquette” and “Next”
April 4: Marie Ponsot’s “Transport”
April 5: Alexander Neubauer’s Poetry in Person, featuring Derek Walcott
April 6: Mark Strand’s “Mirror”
April 7: Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Spring”
April 8: Philip Levine’s “MY FATHERS, THE BALTIC”
April 9: Vera Pavlova’s “A Remedy for Insomnia”
April 10: Stan Rice’s “The Fragment of Statue”
April 11: Marina Tsvetayeva’s “Poems Grow”
April 12: Kevin Young’s “EYES + EGGS [1983]“
April 13: Janusz Szuber’s “About a Boy Stirring Jam”
April 14: Frank O’Hara’s “The Day Lady Died”
April 15: Franz Wright’s "My Pew"
April 16: Mary Jo Salter’s “Welcome to Hiroshima”
April 17: Yehuda Halevi’s “A man in your fifties—and you still would be young?”
April 18: Langston Hughes’s “Black Workers” and “Black Dancers”
April 19: W. S. Di Piero’s “In Our Room”
April 20: Robert Wrigley’s “Kissing a Horse”
April 21: Sharon Olds’s “When He Came for the Family” and “The Signal”
April 22: Irving Feldman’s “Stretched Out at Length”
April 23: W.S. Merwin’s “The Furrow”
April 24: David Lehman’s “Poem in the Manner of a Jazz Standard”
April 25: John Keats’s “This Living Hand”
April 26: Laurie Sheck’s A Monster’s Notes
April 27: Garrett Hongo’s “Volcano House”
April 28: Wallace Stevens’s “Large Red Man Reading”
April 29: Izumi Shikibu’s love poems
April 30: Deborah Digges's "Write a Book a Year"
Knopf's Poem-a-Day 2009
April 1: Half Moon, Small Cloud by John UpdikeApril 2: Going Back to Bed by J.D. McClatchy
April 3: Like Giving to a Blind Man Eyes by Ruth Padel
April 4: Waiting On Elvis, 1956 by Joyce Carol Oates
April 5: Exile’s Child by D. Nurkse
April 6: A Summer Outing by Du Fu
April 7: Touch-Me-Nots by Jill Bialosky
April 8: Sweet Voices and Voices by C.P. Cavafy
April 9: On the Jetty by C.P. Cavafy
April 10: Fragment on Dissembling by Lucie Brock-Broido
April 11: Page From the Koran by James Merrill
April 12: Spring Song II by Jean Garrigue
April 13: Ode to Pepper Vinegar by Kevin Young
April 14: Greeter of Souls by Deborah Digges
April 15: You’re Beautiful by Simon Armitage
April 16: Two Short Poems by Mark Strand
April 17: To See My Mother by Sharon Olds
April 18: Wallace Stevens and Donald Justice
April 19: Robert Lowell’s Poetry Class by Stephanie Hemphill
April 20: Storm by Brooks Haxton
April 21: A Good List by Brad Leithauser
April 22: The Pond by Jim Powell
April 23: Impressions of Africa by Kenneth Koch
April 24: Notes For Sixtieth Wedding Anniversary by Jane Mayhall
April 25: Some Playthings by John Hollander
April 26: There is No City that Does Not Dream by Anne Michaels
April 27: Description of Her Eyes by Franz Wright
April 28: Some Different Kinda Books by Sapphire
April 29: The Mistake by Jack Gilbert
April 30: Creeper and Fine Point by John Updike
May 1: Written Late at Night by Janusz Szuber
I like Hirsch’s embrace of the between-ness of living, the absence of stillness; there will be time for sleep after the curtain falls.
I just wanted to say what a great poem this is for the first day of April. I have also been going through a period of reconciling with my “self” and this poem really speaks to the journey I am on. Thank you Edward and I look forward to reading more of your work.
Andrea
A few years ago I told one of my dearest friends, a psychology professor like myself, that I thought I had a split personality. He went to his library and took down a heap of heavy textbooks to prove to me that I was wrong.
I just sent him a copy of Edward Hirsch’s 22-line, 167-word poem, “Self-portrait,” to prove to him I was right.
B Z F
This poem elegantly expresses the way I look at myself: a criminal mind in a law-abiding body.
This poem couldn’t be Mr. Hirsch’s. It is definitely my self-portrait but expressed beyond my ability. He voiced my dilemma beautifully.
i paln a book which has poem and business topics. not easy, but i like this work. as possible as i read many poems. today, i read it in seoul. thanks for wonderful posting. i like green.^^
I really enjoyed the poem…in fact thought it was marvellous…It’s always a relief to come across someone who has something to say…and knows how to do it.
Bernard,
Who won? LOL I find the dichotomy or between-ness in this poem interesting. Being a psychology teacher, I have this interest. Does Dissociative Identity Disorder(DID) exist? I am a great admirer of Frost. Some find him a pleasant poet. He lulls them with his melody and doesn’t outright say that we are all alone and there are boundaries everywhere. Or does he?