Edward M. Hirsch is an American poet and critic who wrote a national bestseller about reading poetry. He has published nine books of poems, including The Living Fire: New and Selected Poems, which brings together thirty-five years of work, and Gabriel: A Poem, a book-length elegy for his son that The New Yorker called "a masterpiece of sorrow." He has also published five prose books about poetry. He is president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in New York City.
Hirsch is a well-known advocate for poetry whose essays have been published in the American Poetry Review, The New York Times Book Review, The New York Review of Books, and elsewhere. He wrote a weekly column on poetry for The Washington Post Book World from 2002-2005, which resulted in his book Poet’s Choice. His other prose books include Responsive Reading, The Demon and the Angel: Searching for the Source of Artistic Inspiration, and A Poet's Glossary, a complete compendium of poetic terms. He is the editor of Transforming Vision: Writers on Art, Theodore Roethke’s Selected Poems and To a Nightingale. He is the co-editor of A William Maxwell Portrait: Memories and Appreciations and The Making of a Sonnet: A Norton Anthology. He also edits the series "The Writer’s World". Hirsch's first collection of poems, For the Sleepwalkers, received the Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets and the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award from New York University. His second book, Wild Gratitude, received the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1986. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1985 and a five-year MacArthur Fellowship in 1997. He received the William Riley Parker Prize from the Modern Language Association for the best scholarly essay in PMLA for the year 1991. He has also received an Ingram Merrill Foundation Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, a Pablo Neruda Presidential Medal of Honor, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature. He is a former Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Hirsch's book, How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry, was a surprise bestseller and is widely taught throughout the country.
Works
Poetry collections
For the Sleepwalkers,
Wild Gratitude,
The Night Parade,
Earthly Measures,
On Love,
Lay Back the Darkness
Special Orders
The Living Fire : New And Selected Poems
Gabriel: A Poem
Non-fiction books
Transforming Vision: Writers on Art, Selected and Introduced by Edward Hirsch,
How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry,
Responsive Reading,
'Introduction' in John Keats, Complete Poems and Selected Letters of John Keats,
The Demon and the Angel: Searching for the Source of Artistic Expression,
Poet's Choice,
A Poet's Glossary,
Editor
Transforming Vision: Writers on Art,
A William Maxwell Portrait,
Theodore Roethke: Selected Poems,
Irish Writers on Writing, edited with Eavan Boland,
Polish Writers on Writing, edited with Adam Zagajewski,
To a Nightingale: Poems from Sappho to Borges,
The Making of a Sonnet,
Hebrew Writers on Writing, edited with Peter Cole
Nineteenth-Century American Writers on Writing, edited with Brenda Wineapple
Chinese Writers on Writing, edited with Arthur Sze
Romanian Writers on Writing, edited with Norman Manea,
