The Art of Noticing – and Appreciating – Our Dizzying World

The Ezra Klein Show

New York Times Opinion

Society & Culture, Government, News

4.6 • 11K Ratings

🗓️ 3 March 2023

⏱️ 80 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

“Poetry is the attempt to understand fully what is real, what is present, what is imaginable, what is feelable, and how can I loosen the grip of what I already know to find some new, changed relationship,” the poet Jane Hirshfield tells me. Through poetry, she says, “I know something new and I have been changed.” Hirshfield is the award-winning author of nine books of poetry and two illuminating essay collections about what poetry does to us and in the world: “Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry” and “Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World.” Her book “Ledger” is one I gift to people most often. Hirshfield’s true talent as a poet is her singular ability to imbue the ordinary, the invisible, the forgotten with a sense of majesty and wonder. Her work is littered with lines that force you to stop, to slow down, to notice what you might have missed or overlooked. Hirshfield’s work also raises some profound questions: What does it mean to grapple with our complicity in the climate crisis? Where does the self end and the rest of the world begin? How do we learn to desire what we previously dreaded or despised? This is one of those conversations that is hard to describe in words. But it was truly a delight for me to be a part of. And I think you’ll enjoy it too. Mentioned: The Iliad by Homer The Odyssey by Homer Gilgamesh The Beauty by Jane Hirshfield How Emotions Are Made by Lisa Feldman Barrett Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Living with a Wild God by Barbara Ehrenreich The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution by C.P. Snow Book recommendations: Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson Less Than One by Joseph Brodsky The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. “The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Rogé Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Sonia Herrero. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Carol Sabouraud and Kristina Samulewski.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Mr. Clyde.
0:05.8	This is The Ezra Cunchow.
0:22.6	Something I've noticed is when I do episodes that are deep in the arts or the humanities,
0:26.6	I feel the need to really put my shoulder into selling them.
0:29.2	If it's a show on Ukraine or the Republican Party, the topic sells itself.
0:34.4	The poetry sells itself, but I want to try to avoid that kind of intro here,
0:40.7	because this is a lovely episode in part because it's not a linear argument that is easy to describe.
0:46.5	And that is, I think, the point of it, too.
0:49.0	The great poetry is not a linear argument.
0:50.8	It's an effort to get beyond that way of thinking about the world,
0:55.7	to open yourself up to the deficiencies of it.
0:59.6	An effort I'm trying to make more and more of myself these days.
1:03.3	So my guest today is Jane Hirschfield.
1:06.0	She's a poet.
1:06.8	She's the author of many collections of poetry, including her most recent ledger,
1:11.3	which is probably the book of poetry I've gifted to others most often.
1:15.1	She's also the author of two very beautiful books of essays on poetry and how it works in the poetic mind.
1:21.0	And if you're intimidated by poetry, I really recommend these.
1:24.0	Nine gates entering the mind of poetry and ten windows,
1:27.2	how great poems transform the world.
1:29.9	As always, my email, as a client show at nvitimes.com.
1:41.3	Jane Hirschfield, welcome to the show.
	...

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