A cheeky post title, but I couldn’t resist. For my wordplay, however, I trade in some degree of accuracy: actually, for the past few hours, I’ve been immersed in, and mightily impressed by, Jane Hirshfield‘s poetic turns.
As I note in yesterday’s post, Hirshfield is a writer for whom the turn is of great importance. In that post, though, I focus on Hirshfield’s criticism. Having since read much more carefully Hirshfield’s Given Sugar, Given Salt and After, I can also confidently claim that Hirshfield is a poet for whom the turn is of great importance. Evidence of this can be found on a number of this blog’s pages devoted to discussion of particular kinds of poetic structures (or patterns of turning in poems): Hirshfield has poems that employ the dialectical argument structure, the metaphor-to-meaning structure, the dream-to-waking structure, and a few others.
In fact, in After‘s “Articulation: An Assay,” Hirshfield plainly states:
“…thought is hinge and swerve, is winch, / is folding.”
And this certainly is the case, at least, in her own thoughtful poems.
Structure & Surprise 