-
Renewal Soup
Slow Dancer Press
London, UK
199628 pages, softcover, A5 pamphlet
ISBN-10: 1-871033-34-9
ISBN-13: 978-1-871033-34-2Available from:
- the poet, for $5 or £2.50 (includes postage)
info
“Hirschhorn transcends his past, takes in other religions, delights in their logic and observances. Here is love. Here is poetry so rich in modern wonder that I want to quote it, pass it on.
“These poems are full of a wisdom and a depth I see very rarely in poetry… This is a beautiful book, one to be cherished, and if some major British publisher doesn’t bring us a full collection soon, there’s no justice.”
—Steven Waling, Poetry Quarterly Review, 2000, Nether Stowey, Somerset, England
“Hirschhorn’s poems travel from Minnesota to Cambodia to Java, effortlessly — what connects them is the confidence of his voice, which is at once very personal and direct.”
—Poetry London Newsletter, London, England
contents
My First House 5 Starburst 6 Donna, Oh Donna 7 I Dream of Him in Lightness & Dust 8 Self-Portrait 10 Watching Rilke Watching Cézanne
11 Pupil Wei-Min Answers a Riddle 13 He Sweeps the Kitchen Floor 14 Picking Raspberries at Eagle’s Nest Lake, Minnesota 15 Cambodians Celebrate the Buddhist New Year Once Again 16 Number Our Days 17 A Non-Believer Wakens to the First Call to Prayer 19 Elegy 20 Visit to My Teacher Dying of Cancer 20 Along a Beach in West Java 21 A Letter to C. from Beneath Mount Merapi, Central Java 22 On a Guesthouse Veranda, in Surakarta, Central Java 23 Sestina 24 Renewal Soup 25
-
The Terrible Crystal
Hearing Eye Press
Box 1, 99 Torriano Avenue
Kentish Town, London NW5 2RX UK2008
32 pages, softcover
ISBN-10: 1-905082-39-8
ISBN-13: 978-1-905082-39-1Available from:
Hearing Eye Press
the poet, for $6 or £3 (includes postage)info
“A strikingly eclectic collection, though one in which the poems and prose are never less than well-written and crafted, even if sometimes artistically unsatisfying. Hirschhorn is no dilettante though. A second reading confirmed my sense of his delight in his writing, his depth, power and culture. … My favourite poem in the collection is the exquisite and luxuriant ‘composition in indigo and ebony’, the last three lines of which have lodged in my memory:
flash flash
their hide and seek
beetled lucifers
trysting in the bower
pierce the nocturne hour
I’m glad that still happens. Thank you, Norbert Hirschhorn.”
—Paul Lee, 2008, Sphinx Chapbook Reviews.contents
Afterlife of a Predator 5 Mnemosyne 6 The Dying Swan 7 In Memoriam 8 Decorum 9 Silences 10 Nocturns 11 composition in indigo and ebony 12 Invisible Cities 13 On Not Speaking Ill of the Dead 15 When I Married Her, 16 The Ring Dove’s Lament 18 How Many Chances 19 Bangladeshi Harvest 20 Amok 21 Minoru Yamasaki 22 Depression 23 Death in Venice 24 Self Portrait in a MenÕs Room Mirror 25 Kinderszenen 26 Look at the Children 28 Finland, January, 62.9 Degrees North 29 At a London Poetry Festival 31 Notes 32
-
A Cracked River
Slow Dancer Press
London, UK1999
64 pages, softcover, 22.4cm x 14.8cm x 0.5cm
ISBN-10: 1-871033-52-7
ISBN-13: 978-1-871033-52-6
Available from:
amazon.com
amazon.co.uk
the poet, for $5 or £2.50 (includes postage)info
“His poems traverse a broad emotional range, from the comfortable and familiar to the unsettling. His verse reveals a man who is both a humanist and a humorist whose focus remains on the rich details of personal experience rather than the abstractions of larger events.” —Kirkus Reviews, 2000, Amazon.
“Norbert Hirschhorn’s manipulation of language and its rythms is masterful. He weaves images of great delicacy and poignancy and scans the world and people around him with a piercing yet empathetic look. Hirschhorn is an erudite poet, his work rich with allusion…” —Mishka Mojabber Mourani, April 5, 2001, Amazon
1. What else would you like to know?
Number Our Days 7 Parable 9 Donna, Oh Donna 10 Self-Portrait 11 My First House 12 A Handyman Special
13 Billings From Museum 15 “Elegy 17 I Dream Of Him In Lightness And Dust 18 Bertha And Willi 20 2. No, never happened
I Sit Stuffing Vine Leaves 23 Pupil Wei-Min Answeres A Riddle 25 He Sweeps The Kitchen Floor 27 Soliloquy 29 Along A Beach In West Java 30 On A Guesthouse Veranda, In Surakarta, Central Java 31 Corn Bread Baked Chicken 32 I Will Allow Myself Just One Political Poem 33 A Restaurant Named Divorce 34 Pythagoras 35 Composition On Rain, Indonesia 36 3. Anatomy of a sigh
A Non-Believer Wakens To The First Call To Prayer 38 Cambodians Celebrate The Buddhist New Year Once Again 40 Ghetto 41 Visitation 42 Anatomy of a Sigh 43 Love Song, For Kate 44 Because It Is My Heart And Because It Sits In Outer Space 45 Prayers In The Dark 46 A Distant Country 47 4. The Queen of Certain
Solstice 49 A Distant Country 50 Chanterelle 51 Picking Raspberries At Eagle’s Nest Lake 52 A Letter To C. From Beneath Mount Merapi, Central Java 53 Tuscan Still Life, With Sheep 54 New Old Uncle Blues 55 Watching Rilke Watching 56 Fragments From The East 58 Renewal Soup 59
-
Mourning in the Presence of a Corpse
Dar Al-Jadeed
Beirut, Lebanon2008
87 pages, softcover, 14cm x 21cm
ISBN-10: 9953-11-049-2
ISBN-13: 978-9953-11-049-3Available from:
- Adab Wa Fan
- the poet, for $10 or £5 (includes postage)
info
Going boldly where no Lebanese publisher has gone before
Dar al-Jadeed launches its first collection of English-language poetry, by Norbert Hirschhorn
“Poetry doesn’t command much presence in publishing circles. The profile of English-language poetry in countries where English is not the first language — Beirut for instance — is particularly slight… So the recent decision of Beirut-based publishing house Dar al-Jadeed to break this linguistic boundary can be hailed as rather brave… Dar al-Jadeed… is renowned for its volumes by prolific regional writers, such as Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish… As a ‘gesture’ between East and West, Dar al-Jadeed’s choice of publication does fall very much in line with the prevailing theme of cultural dialogue in the region…
“Morbidity and carrion-related imagery are rife in this collection, whose title is taken from the presentation Mourning in the Presence of the Corpse that Lebanese artist and writer Walid Sadek gave at the 2007 Venice Biennale. Hirschhorn’s poem ‘Mnemosyne,’ also in this collection, is dedicated to Sadek… The motif of architecture features strongly, as an anthropomorphic notion of Lebanese identity, pockmarked by bullet holes yet still standing: ‘Memory like mourning in the presence of a corpse/ the corpse refusing burial/ buildings pocked by bullets and mortars/ refusing to collapse.’
“[Hirschhorn's] style ranges from prosaic to the heavily abstract. The poems themselves deal with death, depression, ‘interior exile’ but also romantic affairs, the power of memories and resilience… His work covers a range of registers, from the colloquial to the richly poetic and elevated.”
—Laura Wilkinson, 11 June 2008, The Daily Star, Lebanon
“You know by now how much of my family’s heart is in the Middle East that turns up even in a poem about Johnson Vermont and more overtly in ‘Beirut Wires’ and ‘Lebanon’. I’m interested in how the poems move through other continents, too — in Asia and Europe. I’m moved by the range of moods: from the meditative calendar of months to the funny (to my ears) ‘Screaming my Heads Off’ to the heartbreaking (to my heart) ‘The Ballad of Beth El Cemetery’ (‘we have two little drawers in our church columbarium, next door to two little drawers of my parents-in-law, my own parents lying peacefully on a lovely hill in Arlington’s Military Cemetery,’ where we cannot go). And there’s the range of forms and of words rich with the unfamiliar and the colloquial and the formal. In short, Norbert Hirschhorn, these poems in Mourning in the Presence of a Corpse reward deeply wherever I am when I am reading them. ”
—Eleanor Elson Heginbotham, Ph.D.
Professor Emerita, Concordia University Saint Paul
and Lecturer, English Department, University of Maryland
“Norbert Hirschhorn’s poems demonstrate his linguistic capacity and they demand as much from the reader… Even when dealing with historic events they offer a meditation on the individual.”*
—Roula Rashed, 25 July 2008, An-Nahar, Lebanon
“The American poet Norbert Hirschhorn writes the poetry of life”
“…The richness of his poetry derives not only from its deep and wide wisdom, but from its breath of humanity…. He writes about the human condition with sad and ironic humor. … The poetry possesses the capacity to widen the reader’s horizons and open to new venues of human interaction: Beirut, Bangladesh, Burma, Finland, New Jersey, London.”*
—Sulaiman Bakti, 18 July 2008, Al-Hayat, Pan-Arab Newspaper
Health hero’s verse
“Former U.S. president Bill Clinton hailed him as ‘an American health hero’ for his pioneering medical work in war-torn countries around the globe, but in his autumn years Norbert Hirschhorn is garnering praise for something completely different — poetry.
“The retired physician, who revolutionised rehydration treatment across the developing world and now lives in West Hampstead with his architect wife, has just released his sophomore collection, entitled Mourning in the Presence of a Corpse. Hirschhorn, 70, is the first non-Arabic writer to be published by the influential Dar al-Jadeed imprint in Beirut, where he lives half of the year. ‘The collection was very much influenced by Lebanon. It’s a dangerously endearing country. It’s the perfect country for a poet,’ he says. ‘The book has been very well reviewed in the Arab press. When they praise an American of all things, this to me is the highest praise.’ Some would say the book is dark and despairing — I would say it is optimistic and unblinking. Despite rave reviews, he remains modest: ‘I love the craft and I keep studying it and trying to get better at it.’”—Simon Wroe, November 2008, Camden New Journal
“Mourning in the Presence of a Corpse is a superb volume of poems, the best I’ve seen lately. So many marvelous things… tasteful, meticulous and literate to a great degree.”
—Richard Selzer, MD, 6 May 2009, Yale University
essayist, novelist; author of The Doctor Stories, The Whistler’s Room, and others
*Translated from the Arabic by Rasha al-Ameer and Cynthia Myntti.
contents I
Afterlife Of A Predator 11 Mnemosyne 12 The Dying Swan 13 Scissor Paper Rock 14 On Not Speaking Ill Of The Dead 15 In Memoriam
16 Minoru Yamasaki 17 “Salome With The Head Of St. John The Baptist” 18 Look At The Children 20 Nocturns 21 Composition In Indigo And Indigo 22 contents II
II
The Bishop, The Whale 23 Windward From Joppa 24 A Distant Country 25 Bangladeshi Harvest 26 Four Disciples 28 Pupil Wei-min And The Drowning Girl 29 Burma, 1973 32 Semitic Roots 33 Beirut Wires 36 Lebanon 37 contents III
Finland: A Suite Of Seasons 39 contents IV
Träumerei: Eight Visitations 24 Depression 11 Moontalk 11 What Are The Odds Of Being Born? 11 Last Words 11 Toddler On The Beach 11 The Empress Of Certain 11 When I Married Her 11 How Many Chances? 11 Screaming My Heads Off 11 contents V
Silences 75 Decorum 76 Sonnet In Winter 77 A Ring Dove’s Lament 78 Excerpts From A Field Guide To North American Trees 79 How An Elderly Physicist Petitions The Lord 80 Sailing With The Pleiades 81 Eclogue, Johnson Vermont 82 The Ballad Of Beth El Cemetery, Paramus 84 New Jersey 86 Invisible Cities 88 At A London Poetry Festival 89
-
Sailing with the Pleiades
Editor’s Choice Chapbook Series
Main Street Rag Publishing Company
Charlotte, North Carolina, USA2007
40 pages, softcover
ISBN-10: 1-59948-051-4
ISBN-13: 978-1-59948-051-0Available from:
- Main Street Rag Publishing, for $7 or £3.50 plus international postage
info
* Finalist in the 2006 Spire Spring Poetry Chapbook Contest
* Finalist in the 2006 Main Street Rag’s Annual Chapbook Contest
* Finalist in the 2006 Spire Spring Poetry Chapbook Contest* Finalist in the 2006 Main Street Rag’s Annual Chapbook Contest
“Hirschhorn’s poetry has weight and its transcendental imagery communicates what it is to be human and in contact with the universe… This is generous poetry with metaphors that provide a key to mapping experience… his poetry is vital and energetic. These are surprising peoms that explore the cycles of life, renewal and death.”
—Nick Nolet, The Wolf, U.K.
“The poems that hooked me were the last twelve, ‘Finland: A Suite of Seasons’, chronicling a year in Helsinki. Hirschhorn is so in love with the otherness of the place—its light, its sibilant language—that he drops the cosmic tone and simply describes it.”
—Marcia Menter, 2007, Sphinx Chapbook Reviews.
“The second verse of ‘Excerpts From A Field Guide to North American Trees’ I read over and over because it is such an ordinary thing to walk beneath a tree but such extraordinary way to describe it”
—The Common Reader, 2007, Sphinx Chapbook Reviews.
contents
Eclogue, Johnson Vermont 7 What Are the Odds of Being Born? 8 How an Elderly Physicist Petitions the Lord 9 Sailing with the Pleiades 10 Letter from Assisi to My Boyhood Friend Henry 11 Toddler on the Beach 13 Tov Nun Tzaddik Bes Hey 14 The Empress Of Certain 8 He Sweeps The Kitchen Floor 9 A Physician’s Oath 11 Harvest 12 K. 525 13 Afterlife of A Predator 14 Excerpts from a Field Guide to North American Trees 18 One with Everything 19 Finland: A Suite of Seasons 20 Notes 34
-
The Empress of Certain
Poets Corner Press
8049 Thornton Road
Stockton, California 95209-3024, USA2005
ISBN-10:0-9755972-7-2
ISBN-13: 978-0-9755972-7-9Available from:
- the poet, for $5 or £2.50 (includes postage)
info
*Honorable Mention Winner, 2005, from Poets Corner Press
*Honorable Mention Winner, 2005, from Poets Corner Press
“Norbert Hirschhorn displays a wide range of form, tone and subject-matter. His language is eloquent, his ideas uncommon and perceptive. The poems examine themes like exile, famine, war, atrocity, spiritual wisdom, suffering, and sacrifice. He tackles weighty issues without becoming preachy and his descriptions of horrific events never cross over into rant or melodrama. This is one of the best collections I’ve read in some time. ”
—Rob Mackenzie, Sphinx, March 2006, Fife, Scotland
“We can be grateful for the wisdom and invention of Norbert Hirschhorn’s poems, which strike precisely the right balance between feeling and intellect; their combination of learnedness and urgency is a rare thing indeed.”
—David Wojahn, Professor, Virginia Commonwealth University
“This is a strange and moving book. A soul confronts the implacability of irresistible death, the evanescence and necessity of love, the ineffectuality of knowledge. There are exemplars of balance and wisdom (Master Wu Shei; The Empress of Certain) but they cannot wholly transform our life as hungry predator. The eloquence here cuts deep: ‘No happiness so wide despair cannot cross.&rdsuo; Each poem in this book is a dream, the dream in which we rehearse each night whatever we’ve learned by day that we need to survive.”
—Frank Bidart, Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets
contents
Eclogue, Johnson Vermont 7 Lebanon 1 Windward From Joppa 2 The Bishop, The Whale 3 A Distant Country 4 Pupil Wei-Min And The Drowning Girl
5 Semitic Roots 7 The Empress Of Certain 8 He Sweeps The Kitchen Floor 9 A Physician’s Oath 11 Harvest 12 K. 525 13 Afterlife of A Predator 14 Pupil Wei-Min Answers A Riddle 15 Four Disciples 16 “Invisible Cities” 17 Traumerei: Eight Visitations 19 The Examination 23 Scissor Paper Rock 24
