THE ASKING New and Selected Poems

Jane Hirshfield is a wonderful poet (and essayist, although not in this collection) with a wonderfully broad range of interests. Among the poems here is an ode to buttons. She is also a fine reader of her own work. Her voice has a consistently soft texture from which she manages to wring a considerable range of emotion, always sounding as though she is speaking directly and personally to the listener. While the nominal subjects of the new and selected poems here have varied widely over the years, Hirshfield's general themes have remained consistent: an exploration of the natural world and our place in it, and the role of spirituality in our appreciation of that place. D.M.H. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine [Published: OCTOBER 2023]