Transcript: Poems on Air, Episode 52 - Jane Hirshfield

The following transcript is provided for accessibility only. Layout, formatting, and typography of poems may differ from the original text. We recommend referring to the original, published works when possible to experience the poems as intended by their authors.

[Music intro]

LYNNE THOMPSON: Hello! My name is Lynne Thompson, Poet Laureate for the City of Los Angeles and I’m so happy to welcome listeners to this installment of Poems on Air, a podcast supported by the Los Angeles Public Library. Every week, I’ll present the work of poets I admire, poets who you should know, and poets who have made a substantial and inimitable contribution to the art and craft of poetry.

LYNNE THOMPSON: Sometimes an aspiring writer struggling to find her voice gets extraordinarily lucky in the other writers she has early chances to study with. Such was my luck in learning from Jane Hirshfield, first at the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, and, ever since. Jane’s ethereal—and often radiant, mysterious, and mystical—poems, prose, and translations have appeared in 14 books and many journals. A Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Hirshfield has received numerous awards, including the California Book Award, to name but one. She remains humble, accessible, aware, and we are all the luckier for it.

LYNNE THOMPSON: Today’s poem is "Today, Another Universe" by Jane Hirshfield.

Today, Another Universe



 The arborist has determined:
senescence         beetles            canker
quickened by drought
                                          but in any case
not prunable     not treatable         not to be propped.

And so.

The branch from which the sharp-shinned hawks and their mate-cries.

The trunk where the ant.

The red squirrels’ eighty-foot playground.

The bark    cambium     pine-sap      cluster of needles.

The Japanese patterns           the ink net.

The dapple on certain fish.

Today, for some, the universe will vanish.
First noisily,
then just another silence.

The silence of after, once the theater has emptied.

Of bewilderment after the glacier,
the species, the star.

Something else, in the scale of quickening things,
will replace it,

this hole of light in the light, the puzzled birds swerving around it.

LYNNE THOMPSON: The Los Angeles Poet Laureate was created as a joint program between the City’s Department of Cultural Affairs and the Los Angeles Public Library and this podcast is available wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!

[Music outro]

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    • DISCLAIMER: This is NOT a certified or verbatim transcript, but rather represents only the context of the class or meeting, subject to the inherent limitations of real-time captioning. The primary focus of real-time captioning is general communication access and as such this document is not suitable, acceptable, nor is it intended for use in any type of legal proceeding. Transcript provided by the author.

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