{"product_id":"come-thief-isbn-9780375712074","title":"Come, Thief","description":"A revelatory, indispensable collection of poems from Jane Hirshfield that centers on beauty, time, and the full embrace of an existence that time cannot help but steal from our arms. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHirshfield is unsurpassed in her ability to sink into a moment’s essence and exchange something of herself with its finite music—and then, in seemingly simple, inevitable words, to deliver that exchange to us in poems that vibrate with form and expression perfectly united. Hirshfield’s poems of discovery, acknowledgment of the difficult, and praise turn always toward deepening comprehension. Here we encounter the stealth of feeling’s arrival (“as some strings, untouched, \/ sound when a near one is speaking. \/ So it was when love slipped inside us”), an anatomy of solitude (“wrong solitude vinegars the soul, \/ right solitude oils it”), a reflection on perishability and the sweetness its acceptance invites into our midst (“How suddenly then \/ the strange happiness took me, \/ like a man with strong hands and strong mouth”), and a muscular, unblindfolded awareness of our shared political and planetary fate. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTo read these startlingly true poems is to find our own feelings eloquently ensnared. Whether delving into intimately familiar moments or bringing forward some experience until now outside words, Hirshfield finds for each face of our lives its metamorphosing portrait, its particular, memorable, singing and singular name. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eLove in August\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhite moths\u003cbr\u003eagainst the screen\u003cbr\u003ein August darkness.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSome clamor \u003cbr\u003ein envy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSome spread large\u003cbr\u003eas two hands\u003cbr\u003eof a thief\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ewho wants to put \u003cbr\u003eback in your cupboard\u003cbr\u003ethe long-taken silver.“A deep well full of strength and wisdom.” —\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Vibrant . . . This celebrated American poet clearly savors the material world but does not shy away from seeing past it . . . In these clear-eyed and luminous poems, she has borrowed from the great Tang Dynasty masters and fused style and philosophical outlook into a fresh way of representing experience.”—\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Passionate yet controlled poems.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Times Literary Supplement\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Hirshfield’s lucid poems are philosophical and sensuous, concise yet mysterious. Ruefully funny and irreverently reverent. They are also gloriously earthy as she looks deeply at trees, animals, insects, and our own wondrous if betraying bodies . . . Wittily deductive and metaphysically resplendent, Hirshfield’s supple and knowing poems reflect her long view, her quest for balance, and her exuberant participation in the circle dance of existence.” —\u003ci\u003eBooklist \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Buddhism and aphorism, outdoor delights and indoor wisdom have all attracted readers to Hirshfield’s spare and approachable lines; the poet navigates securely between praise and advice, mostly in clearly quotable form.” —\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “In \u003ci\u003eCome, Thief, \u003c\/i\u003epoet Jane Hirshfield focuses on the lovely but overlooked things in everyday life: stones that are beautiful only when wet, maples setting down their red leaves, the rosy and gold and stippled pattern of her grandfather’s watch. Using clear, straightforward language, she finds the meaning in what could be—in less observant hands—the meaningless, often with a flash of unexpected humor.”  —\u003ci\u003eOprah.com\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e   \u003cbr\u003e “Significant is that the smallest thought can house the largest idea. The universe can be found in a drop of rain or a grain of sand, but we have to know what to look for and how to see. Then there is belief. These poems start with the belief that we have the capacity that the poet has, and it requires a kind of faith in the reader.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Independent Review of Books\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “[Hirshfield] is a visionary. Rarely making spirituality and her own long Zen practice her overt subject, Hirshfield nonetheless makes poems which possess a subtle lucidity that is accessible and understated on the one hand, and suffused with a resonant “beyonding” of the self and the quotidian on the other. Her poems press the experiential  . . . in order to transcend soma and solipsism.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Chronicle of Higher Education\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “The best writers linger over every word, and each line break and segue from image to image; Hirshfield is clearly one of our most precise, careful poets. And \u003ci\u003eCome, Thief , \u003c\/i\u003ewith its flawless construction, is the kind of book that can inhabit you, can even begin to color how you see the particulars of the world. These poems wear a kind of detached delight on their sleeves.” —\u003ci\u003eBasalt Magazine \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e “Her seventh volume of poetry, \u003ci\u003eCome, Thief\u003c\/i\u003e, lures readers into a world rich with alchemical reflections and personal metaphoric revelations. Her verse explores the bitter sweetness of morality through breathtaking details found in the natural world and cradles the reader close with profound simplicity.” —\u003ci\u003ePacific Sun\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eJane Hirshfield\u003c\/b\u003e is the author of six previous collections of poetry, a now-classic book of essays, \u003ci\u003eNine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry, \u003c\/i\u003eand three books collecting the work of women poets from the past. Her awards include fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations, the Academy of American Poets, and the National Endowment for the Arts; three Pushcart Prizes; the California Book Award; The Poetry Center Book Award; and other honors. Her poems appear regularly in \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker, The Atlantic, \u003c\/i\u003eand\u003ci\u003e Poetry \u003c\/i\u003eand have been included in six editions of \u003ci\u003eThe\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eBest American Poetry\u003c\/i\u003e. Her collection \u003ci\u003eGiven Sugar, Given Salt \u003c\/i\u003ewas a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and \u003ci\u003eAfter\u003c\/i\u003e was named a “Best Book of 2006” by \u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post, \u003c\/i\u003ethe\u003ci\u003e San Francisco Chronicle, \u003c\/i\u003eand the United Kingdom’s \u003ci\u003eFinancial Times\u003c\/i\u003e. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.\u003cp\u003e\"French Horn\"\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eFor a few days only,\u003cbr\u003e the plum tree outside the window\u003cbr\u003e shoulders perfection.\u003cbr\u003e No matter the plums will be small,\u003cbr\u003e eaten only by squirrels and jays.\u003cbr\u003e I feast on the one thing, they on another,\u003cbr\u003e the shoaling bees on a third.\u003cbr\u003e What in this unpleated world isn’t someone’s seduction?\u003cbr\u003e The boy playing his intricate horn in Mahler’s Fifth,\u003cbr\u003e in the gaps between playing,\u003cbr\u003e turns it and turns it, dismantles a section,\u003cbr\u003e shakes from it the condensation\u003cbr\u003e of human passage. He is perhaps twenty.\u003cbr\u003e Later he takes his four bows, his face deepening red,\u003cbr\u003e while a girl holds a viola’s spruce wood and maple\u003cbr\u003e in one -half--opened hand and looks at him hard.\u003cbr\u003eLet others clap.\u003cbr\u003e These two, their ears still ringing, hear nothing.\u003cbr\u003e Not the shouts of \u003ci\u003ebravo, bravo,\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e not the timpanic clamor inside their bodies.\u003cbr\u003e As the plum’s blossoms do not hear the bee\u003cbr\u003e nor taste themselves turned into storable honey\u003cbr\u003e by that sumptuous disturbance.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"First Light Edging Cirrus\"\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e1025 molecules\u003cbr\u003e are enough\u003cbr\u003e to call wood thrush or apple.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eA hummingbird, fewer.\u003cbr\u003e A wristwatch: 1024.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eAn alphabet’s molecules,\u003cbr\u003e tasting of honey, iron, and salt,\u003cbr\u003e cannot be counted—\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eas some strings, untouched,\u003cbr\u003e sound when a near one is speaking.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eSo it was when love slipped inside us.\u003cbr\u003e It looked out face to face in every direction.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThen it was inside the tree, the rock, the cloud.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"The Decision\"\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThere is a moment before a shape\u003cbr\u003e hardens, a color sets.\u003cbr\u003e Before the fixative or heat of kiln.\u003cbr\u003e The letter might still be taken\u003cbr\u003e from the mailbox.\u003cbr\u003e The hand held back by the elbow,\u003cbr\u003e the word kept between the larynx pulse\u003cbr\u003e and the amplifying -drum--skin of the room’s air.\u003cbr\u003e The thorax of an ant is not as narrow.\u003cbr\u003e The green coat on old copper weighs more.\u003cbr\u003e Yet something slips through it—\u003cbr\u003e looks around,\u003cbr\u003e sets out in the new direction, for other lands.\u003cbr\u003e Not into exile, not into hope. Simply changed.\u003cbr\u003e As a sandy -track--rut changes when called a Silk Road:\u003cbr\u003e it cannot be after turned back from.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Vinegar and Oil\"\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eWrong solitude vinegars the soul,\u003cbr\u003e right solitude oils it.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eHow fragile we are, between the few good moments.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eComing and going unfinished,\u003cbr\u003e puzzled by fate,\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003elike the -half--carved relief\u003cbr\u003e of a fallen donkey, above a church door in Finland.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"The Tongue Says Loneliness\"\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThe tongue says loneliness, anger, grief,\u003cbr\u003e but does not feel them.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eAs Monday cannot feel Tuesday,\u003cbr\u003e nor Thursday\u003cbr\u003e reach back to Wednesday\u003cbr\u003e as a mother reaches out for her found child.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eAs this life is not a gate, but the horse plunging through it.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eNot a bell,\u003cbr\u003e but the sound of the bell in the -bell--shape,\u003cbr\u003e lashing full strength with the first blow from inside the iron.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Knopf","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300122808549,"sku":"NP9780375712074","price":22.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780375712074.jpg?v=1767723952","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/come-thief-isbn-9780375712074","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}