You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hi, this is Michael Silverblatt, and welcome to Bookworm.

Today, my guest is Jane Hirschfield.

She's a poet and editor.

She's the author most recently of a book of her own poems, The October Palace, and an anthology

of 43 centuries of spiritual poetry by women called Women in Praise of the Sacred, published

by Harper Collins.

Okay.

I thought I'd ask, you know, to do the impossible in this sphere to begin by defining

terms.

What is the sacred?

Interesting question.

I had to ask myself that question rather late in this process, because, of course, one knows it when one sees it.

You don't have to define it.

And it suddenly occurred to me that perhaps it would be useful for me to think about it.

And for me, especially since this book encompasses so many different traditions in which the

definition would be very different for each woman, my own sense and the one I am giving to them

is that the sacred is that thing which is larger than ourselves to which when we feel connected, it gives our lives meaning.

You know, it is something beyond the personal life, the narrow life of ego and personal history

...