“Hirshfield’s are the kind of poems that could—before you even realize it—have quietly changed your life.” — O Magazine In this luminous and authoritative collection, Jane Hirshfield presents an ever – deepening and altering comprehension of human existence in poems utterly unique, as William Matthews once wrote of her work, in their "praise of ceaseless mutability as life's central splendor." Hirshfield explores questions of identity, aging, death, and of time and the variegated gifts brought by its relentless passage. Whether meditating upon a button, the role of habit in our lives, or the elusive nature of our relationship to sleep, Hirshfield brings each subject into a surprising and magnified existence. Poet, essayist, anthologist, and translator Hirschfield has infused her fifth book of poetry with the pensiveness of middle age. Amid the comfort of familiar things "the dog, the blue coffee mug" there is the disconsolate sense of life passing and the melancholy sloughing off of former selves: "One woman washes her face,/ another picks up the boar-bristled hairbrush,/ a third steps out of her slippers./ That each will die in the same bed means nothing to them." Hirschfield sees her life not as a static condition but as a fluid, changeable medium: "As water given sugar sweetens, given salt grows salty,/ we become our choices." Over and over, Hirschfield attempts to speak clearly and plainly while acknowledging the difficulty perhaps the impossibility of doing so. In her Zen-influenced attempts to reduce poetry to the essential statement, she is frustrated with her too-human failures. In one very likable poem called "Button," she envies a button for its invulnerability to that unattractive emotion: "A button envies no neighboring button,/ no snap, no knot, no polyester-braided toggle./ It rests on its red-checked shirt in serene disregard." These are assured, controlled poems that tread carefully where others have trampled. They should be enjoyed by a wide range of readers. Ellen Kaufman, Dewey Ballantine Law Lib. LLP, New York Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. "Jane Hirshfield's poems move like light beams -- searching, discovering, pausing to make sure. They have some of the calligraphic plainness of classical Chinese painting: a few strokes and a new landscape appears, with a life in it not seen before but at once recognized. These are poems of space, air, and a remarkable precision of observation and revealed feeling." — W. S. Merwin “Jane Hirshfield’s poems have such a wonderfully obsessive personal grammar and such delicate reversals that all objects and elements—like a house and its neighboring redwood tree—merge.” — Michael Ondaatje “Hirshfield’s are the kind of poems that could—before you even realize it—have quietly changed your life.” — O Magazine “These are assured, controlled poems that tread carefully where others have trampled.” — Library Journal "These poems are highly accessible....[their sense] seeps into one's consciousness, like the aftertaste of some delectable morsel." — Kirkus Reviews "I enjoyed this new collection very much. Hirshfield's poems are fresh bright, very precise clear. She is a refreshing poet." — Sue Domis, Sunshine & Wisteria An extraordinary new collection in which the widely acclaimed poet deepens and extends her explorations of essential human questions amid the changing and sensuous world. "As water given sugar sweetens, give salt grows salty,/ we become our choices," writes Jane Hirshfield in Given Sugar, Given Salt , her fifth and most expansive volume of poems to date.  In this luminous and authoritative new collection, Hirshfield presents an ever-deepening and altering comprehensive of human existence in poems utterly unique, as William Matthews once wrote of her work, in their "praise of ceaseless mutability as life's central splendor." In poems complex in meaning yet clear in statement and depiction, Hirshfield explores questions of identity, aging, and death; of the losses and gains both passionate connection and solitude; of time and the variegated gifts brought by its relentless passage.  Whether meditating upon a button, the role of habit in our lives, or the elusive nature of our relationship to sleep, Hirshfield brings each subject into a surprising and magnified existence.  Through the breadth and honed beauty of her contemplations, and in the deep usefulness readers ascribe to her work in their own lives.  Hirshfield has found a place distinctively her own among American poets. The author of five previous poetry collections and a book of essays, Jane Hirshfield has been a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award and England’s T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry, and she is the winner of the Poetry Center Book Award, the California Book Award, and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker ,