{"product_id":"the-beauty-isbn-9780345806857","title":"The Beauty","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eAn incandescent collection from one of American poetry's most distinctive and essential voices\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Beauty\u003c\/i\u003e opens with a series of dappled, ranging \"My\" poems--\"My Skeleton,\" \"My Corkboard,\" \"My Species,\" \"My Weather\"--in which Hirshfield uses materials both familiar and unexpected to explore the magnitude, singularity, and permeability of our shared existence. Of her memory, she writes, \"Like the small soaps and shampoos \/ a traveler brings home \/ then won't use, \/ you, memory, \/ almost weightless \/ this morning inside me.\" With a pen faithful to the actual yet dipped at times in the ink of the surreal, Hirshfield cuts, as always, directly to the heart of human experience. Her robust affirmation of choice even amid inevitability and her contemplation of our moral, societal, and biological intertwinings sustain poems that tune and retune the keys of a life. For Hirshfield, \"Zero Plus Anything Is a World.\" Her recipes for that world (\"add salt to hunger,\" \"add time to trees\") offer an altered understanding of our lives' losses and additions, and of the small and larger beauties we so often miss.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003e“Gracefully evocative … [Hirshfield’s] pithy and disarming lyrics have a touch of Dickinson about them as she sets human dilemmas within nature’s perpetual surge...[her] contemplative acuity, erudite imagination, and exceptional fluency in image and language make for a beautifully agile and sage volume.”— Donna Seaman,\u003ci\u003e Booklist\u003c\/i\u003e (starred review)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e “An exquisite collection that displays her talents of observation and her willingness to look at life through the lens of hindsight.” —Anisse Gross, \u003ci\u003eThe San Francisco Gate\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e “Hirshfield’s new poems emerge as fiercely strong yet tender, drawing on supple intuition and clarifying intelligence to evoke the richness of her authentic inner life. Hirshfield sees beyond self, perceiving fresh perspectives flowing through our permeability and interconnection.” —Robert Bonazzi, \u003ci\u003eWorld Literature Today\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e “\u003ci\u003eThe Beauty\u003c\/i\u003e composes the ordinary fruit, in the ordinary kitchen, the ants, the towels, the hopes, the loss, the way we humans believe and lose faith, all of it contained in the hours of every single ordinary day, and renders it beautiful, noticeable.” —Kirsten Rian, \u003ci\u003eThe Oregonian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Throughout \u003ci\u003eThe Beauty,\u003c\/i\u003e her gracefully evocative eighth book of poems, Hirshfield is archly witty and riddling. In “My Skeleton,” for example, she offers a fresh and startling look at our relationship with our bodies, a subject rooted in her fascination with perception, science, and underlying structures of all kinds. Her succinct and arresting observations—often framed within such everyday moments as waking in the morning and sitting in a kitchen, and inspired by the subtle wonders of honey, cellophane, church bells, even the journey of a common cold—swerve suddenly and exhilaratingly onto metaphysical terrain. Her pithy and disarming lyrics have a touch of Dickinson about them as she sets human dilemmas within nature’s perpetual surge: “Generation. \/ Strange word: both making and passing.” Hirshfield’s contemplative acuity, erudite imagination, and exceptional fluency in image and language make for a\u003cbr\u003ebeautifully agile and sage volume.\"\u003cbr\u003e— Donna Seaman,\u003ci\u003e Booklist\u003c\/i\u003e (starred review)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eThe Beauty\u003c\/i\u003e, Jane Hirshfield's eighth collection, reveals a poet at the height of her powers. With her signature use of deceptively simple images and language, she hints at the unspoken truths that lie just beyond our perspective while celebrating the everyday details and connections that make a life. . . While many of these poems are brief, they are masterpieces in miniature. Their images are simple but not obvious; they are offered without judgment. They also reward contemplation. Hirshfield asks her readers to wait for their own reactions, suggesting that those reactions matter because they open the door to the poem's meaning, and because they unite us all. --Jeanette Zwart,\u003ci\u003e Shelf Awareness\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eA \u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e Pick of the Week\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eJANE HIRSHFIELD\u003c\/b\u003e is the author of eight books of poetry, including \u003ci\u003eThe Beauty;\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eCome, Thief; After; \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eGiven Sugar, Given Salt. \u003c\/i\u003eShe has edited and cotranslated four books presenting the work of poets from the past and is the author of two major collections of essays, \u003ci\u003eNine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eTen Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World.\u003c\/i\u003e Her books have been finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award and England’s T. S. Eliot Prize; they have been named best books of the year by \u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, \u003c\/i\u003eAmazon\u003ci\u003e, \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eFinancial Times; \u003c\/i\u003eand they have won the California Book Award, the Poetry Center Book Award, and the Donald Hall–Jane Kenyon Prize in American Poetry. Hirshfield has received fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Academy of American Poets. Her poems have appeared in \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Times Literary Supplement, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, Poetry, Orion, Discover, The American Poetry Review, McSweeney’s, \u003c\/i\u003ethe \u003ci\u003ePushcart Prize \u003c\/i\u003eanthology\u003ci\u003e, \u003c\/i\u003eand eight editions of \u003ci\u003eThe Best American Poetry.\u003c\/i\u003e A resident of Northern California since 1974, she is a current chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.\u003c\/p\u003eMy Eyes\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e An hour is not a house, \u003cbr\u003e a life is not a house, \u003cbr\u003e you do not go through them as if \u003cbr\u003e they were doors to another.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Yet an hour can have shape and proportion, \u003cbr\u003e four walls, a ceiling. \u003cbr\u003e An hour can be dropped like a glass.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Some want quiet as others want bread. \u003cbr\u003e Some want sleep.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e My eyes went\u003cbr\u003e to the window, as a cat or dog left alone does.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e _______\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e I Wake Early\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e I wake early, \u003cbr\u003e make two cups of coffee, \u003cbr\u003e drink one, \u003cbr\u003e think, go back to sleep, \u003cbr\u003e wake again, think, \u003cbr\u003e drink the other.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e To start a day over \u003cbr\u003e is a card game played for no money, \u003cbr\u003e a ripe tomato, \u003cbr\u003e a swimming cat.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Time here: \u003cbr\u003e lukewarm, \u003cbr\u003e with milk and sugar, \u003cbr\u003e big and unset as a table.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e I wake twice.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Twice the window \u003cbr\u003e unbroken, transparent.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Twice the cat’s nose and ears above water. \u003cbr\u003e Twice the war (my war) \u003cbr\u003e is distant, \u003cbr\u003e its children’s children are distant.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e _______\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Zero Plus Anything Is a World\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Four less one is three. \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Three less two is one.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e One less three \u003cbr\u003e is what, is who, \u003cbr\u003e remains.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e The first cell that learned to divide \u003cbr\u003e learned to subtract.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Recipe: \u003cbr\u003e add salt to hunger.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Recipe: \u003cbr\u003e add time to trees.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Zero plus anything \u003cbr\u003e is a world.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e This one \u003cbr\u003e and no other, \u003cbr\u003e unhidden, \u003cbr\u003e by each breath changed.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Recipe: \u003cbr\u003e add death to life.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Recipe: \u003cbr\u003e love without swerve what this will bring.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Sister, father, mother, husband, daughter.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Like a cello \u003cbr\u003e forgiving one note as it goes, \u003cbr\u003e then another.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Excerpted from The Beauty by Jane Hirshfield. Copyright © 2015 by Jane Hirshfield. Excerpted by permission of Knopf, a division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.","brand":"Knopf","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300565111013,"sku":"NP9780345806857","price":18.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780345806857.jpg?v=1767738290","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-beauty-isbn-9780345806857","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}