This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Arts & Entertainment

Jane Hirshfield Reads

Join us for wine and refreshments as award-winning poet Jane Hirshfield reads from Come, Thief (Knopf, $25), a revelatory, indispensable collection of poems that centers on beauty, time, and the full embrace of an existence that time cannot help but steal from our arms.

 

Hirshfield 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.

Find out what's happening in Berkeleywith free, real-time updates from Patch.

To read her 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.

Jane Hirshfield is the author of six previous collections of poetry, a now-classic book of essays, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry, and 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 inThe New YorkerThe Atlantic, and Poetry and have been included in six editions of the The Best American Poetry. Her collection Given Sugar, Given Salt was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and After was named a “Best Book of 2006” by The Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the United Kingdom’s Financial Times. Jane Hirshfield lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Find out what's happening in Berkeleywith free, real-time updates from Patch.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?