The Beauty, Jane Hirshfield's (Come, Thief) eighth collection, reveals a poet at the height of her powers. With her signature use of deceptively simple images and language, she hints at the unspoken truths that lie just beyond our perspective while celebrating the everyday details and connections that make a life.
The opening poem, "Fado," is one of the collection's loveliest. A magician conjures a quarter from a girl's ear, while in that "same half-stopped moment," a woman in a wheelchair in Portugal sings a fado at dawn. The quiet, beautiful descriptions belie the writer's wonder that two people oceans apart both live small miracles. The focus in this collection moves outward, from the specific to the universal, and later poems describe an object or episode from a greater distance, without editorial. In "Anywhere You Look," Hirshfield writes "in the corner of a high rain gutter/ under the roof tiles/ new grasses' delicate seed heads/ what war, they say." The poems begin to acknowledge that the business of living profoundly connects us.
Hirshfield's work has always been steeped in Zen Buddhism, fusing observed, sensory experience with mindful acceptance. Still, these poems acknowledge the struggle and the inevitability of regret. While many of the poems are brief, they are masterpieces in miniature. Their images are simple but not obvious; they are offered without judgment. They also reward contemplation. Hirshfield asks her readers to wait for their own reactions, suggesting that those reactions matter because they open the door to the poem's meaning, and because they unite us all. --Jeanette Zwart, freelance writer and reviewer