If Basho Were Alive Now, As A Woman...

Jane Hirshfield's Come, Thief

(Knopf, 2011)

“What in this unpleated world isn't someone's seduction?”

There it is, right on page one, the poet stating her intent: this will be a seduction. But because it's orchestrated by Jane Hirshfield, it will revel in imperfection and impermanence. Readers familiar with Hirshfield's work will recognize her strong Eastern lean here. There is an aphoristic quality that suggests the haiku master Basho. Living in Seventeenth Century Japan, he wrote “Even in Kyoto—/ Hearing the cuckoo’s cry—/ I long for Kyoto.”* Had he been a Twenty-First Century American woman, he might have written “Stay, leaf./ It reddened,/ embarrassed for me and itself.” (22) That same poem (The Promise) ends with “Stay, I said to my loves./ Each answered,/ Always.” Hirshfield and Basho are kindred spirits, understanding all too well the ephermeral nature of our existence and the exquisite heartbreak of being born to die. Both masters write the kind of poems mimicked by less experienced poets because they appear simple. But while the images and metaphors are straightforward, they haven't been simplified.

Take the title piece. It uses familiar images of a window, a path leading to a door, and a fire. The poet compares the window to a lax guard; she makes the path an accomplice of the titular thief (i.e. time); she links the fire to birth and love; it’s all very predictable and plain. In less accomplished hands this poem would be a lament that nothing lasts, but Hirshfield warmly courts the thief, saying, "Dear one, enter." It's a difficult stance for an American poet; not only do we like to think that love conquers all, we cling to it as if its absence were a form of death. The speaker of this poem knows better and says so. All things subject to time must end, therefore an ephemeral being must embrace both love and the absence of love. We must welcome the thief, knowing he will take everything. It feels like a much larger piece of writing that has been carefully honed down to its essential 8 lines, instead of writing that was born small and never grew beyond its initial idea.

Very few of the poems in Come,Thief are longer than a page and many are much shorter. It makes for a satisfying afternoon—poems that can be grasped on an initial reading that also inspire (and reward) multiple readings. In the time it takes to finish, the light will have changed from the bright glare of day to the softer, more forgiving tones of early evening. And the poems will stay with you. Late at night you might think of them again, how their embrace of impermanence is full of joy, like master Basho: “It would melt/ in my hand—/ the autumn frost.”*

*Translations of Basho by Robert Haas