Wednesday: Edward Hirsch at UCI

This Wednesday, UC Irvine hosts poet Edward Hirsch as part of the Chancellor's Distinguished Speakers Series.

Andrew Tonkovich writing in the OC Weekly has this to say:

UC Irvine’s most recent Chancellor’s Distinguished Fellows Series speaker brought out protesters against a former Mexican president, engaging the community in a perhaps-unanticipated fellowship of which the school might be proud. One hopes for more with this week’s “My Pace Provokes My Thoughts: Poetry and Walking” by poet/poetry promoter Edward Hirsch.

This free, public lecture series is a gift to the neighborhood, plus an opportunity to see the scholars and artists you would otherwise pay for big-time at venues named after real-estate tycoons.

Besides being a teacher, poet and essayist, Hirsch famously turned a sometimes-poetry-phobic public on with his best-selling How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love With Poetry. Now, apparently, he wants us all to think. And walk. At the same time.

The event begins at 7:30 in the Doheny Beach Room of the UCI Student center – and it's free.


And now a poem by Hirsch:

I'm Going to Start Living Like a Mystic

Today I am pulling on a green wool sweater
and walking across the park in a dusky snowfall.

The trees stand like twenty-seven prophets in a field,
each a station in a pilgrimage—silent, pondering.

Blue flakes of light falling across their bodies
are the ciphers of a secret, an occultation.

I will examine their leaves as pages in a text
and consider the bookish pigeons, students of winter.

I will kneel on the track of a vanquished squirrel
and stare into a blank pond for the figure of Sophia.

I shall begin scouring the sky for signs
as if my whole future were constellated upon it.

I will walk home alone with the deep alone,
a disciple of shadows, in praise of the mysteries.

*

I see no reason not to drive over this Wednesday. Hope to see you there.