After

Author: Jane Hirshfield 

Publisher: Harper Perennial (2007)

After is an extended investigation into incarnation, transience and interconnection. These alert, incisive and compassionate poems examine the human condition through subjects ranging from spareness, possibility, judgement and hidden grief to global warming, insomnia, meanings in overlooked parts of speech, and the metaphysics of sneezing. Often elegies—some overt, others implicit—these poems resound with a bass-note awareness of time, its inexorable subtractions but also its exuberant gifts.

"Jane Hirshfield is a poet very close to my heart."

–Wislawa Szymborska

"A profound empathy for the suffering of all living beings…It is precisely this that I praise in the poetry of Jane Hirshfield…In its highly sensuous detail, her poetry illuminates the Buddhist virtue of mindfulness."

–Czesław Miłosz