Lying -- Jane Hirshfield

(Poem #1833) Lying He puts his brush to the canvas, with one quick stroke unfolds a bird from the sky. Steps back, considers. Takes pity. Unfolds another. -- Jane Hirshfield

      (November 1994)

Hirshfield's another new-to-me poet - I stumbled across this little gem
while randomly surfing poetry sites and was instantly captivated. There is a
wonderful balance between the static and the dynamic - the explicit
description of painting leads me almost subconsciously to visualise the poem
itself as a painting, beautiful and self-contained, and then a metaphorical
step backwards reveals a temporal, almost balletic aspect that paradoxically
enhances rather than shattering the impression of containedness.

I was reminded strongly of Basho's famous haiku

  old pond.....
  a frog leaps in
  water's sound

(Poem #23, and see also Poem #1455 and
http://www.bopsecrets.org/gateway/passages/basho-frog.htm) - there is the
same impression of a sequence of events captured within a bounded whole,
though Hirshfield's penultimate "Takes pity" adds a human element that takes
it beyond the isolated beauty of the haiku.

martin

[Links]

Biography: American Poet, 1953-
  http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/563
  [broken link] http://www.sunyulster.edu/people/Hirshfield.asp

Interesting articles:
  [broken link] http://www.poems.com/hirinter.htm
  http://www.salon.com/weekly/hirshfield.html