After

<p><strong>Jane Hirshfield is one of our finest most memorable contemporary poets. --David Baker <em>The American Poet</em></strong></p><p><strong>Hirshfield's poems . . . send ripples across the reflecting pool of our collective consciousness. -- <em>Booklist </em>(starred review)</strong></p><p>A profound generous and masterful sixth collection by one of the preeminent American poets of her generation <em>After </em>explores incarnation transience and our intimate connection with others and with all existence. Jane Hirshfield's alert incisive and compassionate poems examine the human condition through subjects ranging from sparseness possibility judgment and hidden grief to global warming insomnia the meanings to be found in generally overlooked parts of speech and the metaphysics of sneezing. In respective series of assays (meditative imaginative accountings) and pebbles (each a brief easily pocketable perception that remains incomplete until the reader's own response awakens inside it) Hirshfield explores a poetry-making that looks simultaneously outward and inward finding resonant and precise containers for the deepest currents of our inner life.</p>