{"product_id":"the-living-fire-isbn-9780375710032","title":"The Living Fire","description":"A comprehensive selection of one of our most beloved poet’s rich and significant body of work alongside a gathering of “brilliant, deeply pleasurable” new poems (\u003ci\u003eBooklist).\u003c\/i\u003e“The everyday and the otherworldly temper each other in these excellent poems, and American poetry gains new strength as a result.” —\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003eEdward Hirsch is the author of seven previous collections of poetry and four prose books. He has received numerous awards for his poetry, including a MacArthur fellowship and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and publishes regularly in a wide variety of magazines and journals. He serves as the president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and lives in New York City.For the Sleepwalkers\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTonight I want to say something wonderful\u003cbr\u003efor the sleepwalkers who have so much faith\u003cbr\u003ein their legs, so much faith in the invisible\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003earrow carved into the carpet, the worn path\u003cbr\u003ethat leads to the stairs instead of the window,\u003cbr\u003ethe gaping doorway instead of the seamless mirror.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI love the way that sleepwalkers are willing\u003cbr\u003eto step out of their bodies into the night,\u003cbr\u003eto raise their arms and welcome the darkness,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003epalming the blank spaces, touching everything.\u003cbr\u003eAlways they return home safely, like blind men\u003cbr\u003ewho know it is morning by feeling shadows.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd always they wake up as themselves again.\u003cbr\u003eThat’s why I want to say something astonishing\u003cbr\u003elike: \u003ci\u003eOur hearts are leaving our bodies.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eOur hearts are thirsty black handkerchiefs\u003cbr\u003eflying through the trees at night, soaking up\u003cbr\u003ethe darkest beams of moonlight, the music\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eof owls, the motion of wind- torn branches.\u003cbr\u003eAnd now our hearts are thick black fists\u003cbr\u003eflying back to the glove of our chests.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWe have to learn to trust our hearts like that.\u003cbr\u003eWe have to learn the desperate faith of sleepwalkers\u003cbr\u003ewho rise out of their calm beds\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eand walk through the skin of another life.\u003cbr\u003eWe have to drink the stupefying cup of darkness\u003cbr\u003eand wake up to ourselves, nourished and surprised.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Poet At Seven\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe could be any seven- year-old on the lawn,\u003cbr\u003eholding a baseball in his hand, ready to throw.\u003cbr\u003eHe has the middle- class innocence of an American,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eexcept for his blunt features and dark skin\u003cbr\u003ethat mark him as a Palestinian or a Jew,\u003cbr\u003ehis forehead furrowed like a question,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ehis concentration camp eyes, nervous, grim,\u003cbr\u003eand too intense. He has the typical\u003cbr\u003eblood of the exile, the refugee, the victim.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLook at him looking at the catcher for a sign—\u003cbr\u003eso violent and competitive, so unexceptional,\u003cbr\u003eexcept for an ancestral lamentation,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ea shadowy, grief- stricken need for freedom\u003cbr\u003elaboring to express itself through him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eM i l k\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy mother wouldn’t be cowed into nursing\u003cbr\u003eand decided that formula was healthier\u003cbr\u003ethan the liquid from her breasts.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd so I never sucked a single drop\u003cbr\u003efrom the source, a river dried up.\u003cbr\u003eIt was always bottled for me.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut one night in my mid- thirties\u003cbr\u003ein a mirrored room off Highway 59\u003cbr\u003ea woman who had a baby daughter\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eturned to me with an enigmatic smile\u003cbr\u003eand cupped my face in her chapped hands\u003cbr\u003eand tipped her nipple into my mouth.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis happened a long time ago in another city\u003cbr\u003eand it is wrong to tell about it.\u003cbr\u003eIt was infantile to bring it up in therapy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd yet it is one of those moments—\u003cbr\u003emisplaced, involuntary—that swim up\u003cbr\u003eout of the past without a conscience:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe lifts my face and I taste it—\u003cbr\u003ethe sudden spurting nectar,\u003cbr\u003ethe incurable sweetness that is life.","brand":"Knopf","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46299837366501,"sku":"NP9780375710032","price":26.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780375710032.jpg?v=1767740288","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-living-fire-isbn-9780375710032","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}