Poems mesmerized me, and I felt better when I was writing them, or trying to - more in touch with something deep and dark within myself.

The sole literary presence from my childhood was my grandfather, a Jewish immigrant from Latvia, who eccentrically copied poems into the backs of his books. After he died, when I was 8 years old, my grandmother gave his books away, and his poems were lost.

I grew up in a middle-class house without books, without art. No one around me wrote poetry or even read it.

Edward Hirsch Quotes