Given Sugar, Given Salt: Poems

“Hirshfield’s are the kind of poems that could—before you even realize it—have quietly changed your life.” —O Magazine

In this luminous and authoritative collection, Jane Hirshfield presents an ever–deepening and altering comprehension of human existence in poems utterly unique, as William Matthews once wrote of her work, in their "praise of ceaseless mutability as life's central splendor."

Hirshfield explores questions of identity, aging, death, and of time and the variegated gifts brought by its relentless passage. Whether meditating upon a button, the role of habit in our lives, or the elusive nature of our relationship to sleep, Hirshfield brings each subject into a surprising and magnified existence.