This first full-length scholarly treatment of award-winning poet Jane Hirshfields work covers format and structure; three approaches to the poetry; Zen and the problem of desire; Hirshfields response to the more-than-human world and her warnings to humanity not to ignore the ecological crisis; belonging, loss, and the comfort of poetry.
Zen, Meaning, and Craft in Jane Hirshfield's Poetry: Heartshoots is the first scholarly volume to be dedicated to the large body of work produced by North American Zen poet, Jane Hirshfield. The volume is co-authored by a Zen Buddhist scholar and a poetry scholar, who are both practicing poets. Its five chapters cover format and structure; three fruitful approaches to the poetry; Zen and the problem of desire; Hirshfields response to the more-than-human world and her warnings to humanity not to ignore the ecological crisis; belonging, loss, and the comfort of poetry. The book portrays poetry as a heartshoot that can bridge the artificial divide between external and internal worlds and can draw forth compassion as well as delight. In Hirshfields hands, it mobilises the considerable power of cognitive, verbal and semantic surprise to lead the reader gently to new insights about the connectedness of all that is.
Glossary of Sanskrit Terms
Introduction
1. Form and Structure
2. Doors, Gates, Portals: Poetic Themes
3. Zen and Desire
4. Nature as an Unclosed Circle
5. Attachment, Loss, and the Solace Of Poetry
Conclusion
Index
Deirdre C. Byrne is Director of ZAPP (the South African Poetry Project), a practising poet, and Professor of English Studies at the University of South Africa. She is Editor of the academic journal Scrutiny2: Issues in English Studies in Southern Africa. Her main research interest is in womens poetry and speculative fiction. Her work on feminist readings of speculative fiction has been published in Extrapolation; Entanglements and Weavings: Diffractive to Gender and Love; Fluid Gender, Fluid Love; and Ecofeminist Science Fiction: International Perspectives on Gender, Ecology, and Literature.
Garth J. Mason is Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies and Arabic at the University of South Africa and a practising poet. He has a long-term interest in peoples lived experiences of spirituality, and his research on this has been published in Contemporary Buddhism, Religious Education, and The Journal for the Study of Religion in South Africa. He is also a regular contributor to Oxford annotated Bibliographies in Buddhism series.
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