A Poet's Glossary

摘要

Edward Hirsch is a fine and enjoyable American poet who recently published a fine and enjoyable reference book, A Poet's Glossary. This book is not like a typical glossary. It does not provide a list of short definitions for quick reference related to the subject of poetry; instead, Hirsch's definitions are often in depth (ranging from one short paragraph to multiple pages long), idiosyncratic and quite poetic in their own right. The book, which totals around 700 pages, was clearly a labour of love for Hirsch, and it shows in the care that he put into each definition and his selection of terms. Those terms are not exclusive to the poetry tradition in English but include terms related to poetry traditions in just about every language in the world, including Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, Latin, Spanish, Welsh, Irish, Scottish, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, African languages and others. While Hirsch emphasizes more terms from English poetry than any other language (and in his introduction, Hirsch readily admits to a slight English-language bias), those are the terms for which his readers will most likely be searching. So that makes perfect sense. Nevertheless, it is very impressive how culturally inclusive and comprehensive Hirsch's book is. It is hard to think of a term related to poetry that he does not include.