Jane Hirshfield: In-Person & Online

Curt Richter

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Poetry

Jane Hirshfield: In-Person & Online

Past Event: Monday, October 2, 2023

At Rainier Arts Center

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In Person & Online

Although this event has passed, you can still purchase a digital pass to view the recording through Monday, October 9. Iconic poet Jane Hirshfield addresses the urgent immediacies of our time in her long-awaited The Asking, which assays the full ranges of our shared and borrowed lives: our bonds of eros and our responsibilities to the planet; the singing dictions and searchlight dimensions of perception; the willing plunge into an existence both perishing and beloved, recognized in these poems as dazzling, “even now, even here.”

All Poetry Series, Create Your Own Series, and Super SAL subscribers receive a copy of The Asking, shipped to their doors by our partner bookstore, Open Books. Please note: complimentary subscriptions and single tickets do not include the book.

The Asking takes its title from the closing line of one of its newly appearing poems: “don’t despair of this falling world, not yet   didn’t it give you the asking.” In its substantial section of new work, Jane Hirshfield continues her signature affirmation of the central contradictions, uncertainties, and harvests of astonishment that shape our human lives.

A forefront spokesperson for the biosphere and the alliance of science and imagination, Hirshfield offers, as indispensable compass, the choice to embrace what comes. In poems of the smallest ant and the vastness of time, of hunger and bounty, physics, war, and love in myriad forms, these pages—drawn from nine books and five decades of writing—bring the insights and slant-lights that come to us only through poems: through questioning arc, tact, a looking both close and sweeping; through music-inflected pondering, recombinatory leap.

In an era of algorithm, assertion, silo, and induced distraction, Hirshfield’s poems bring a much-needed awakening response, actively countering narrowness. Interrogating language itself, pondering beauty amid bewilderment and transcendence amid transience, Hirshfield invites shimmering truths into black ink. With quietly magnifying brushwork and numinous clarity, The Asking expands our awareness of both breakage’s grief and the abiding possibility for repair.

Jane Hirshfield is the author of ten collections of poetry and two now-classic collections of essays on poetry’s deep workings, and the editor of four co-translated books presenting world poets from the deep past. Hirshfield is one of American poetry’s central spokespersons for concerns about the biosphere and interconnection.

Her honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations and from the Academy of American Poets; the Poetry Center Book Award and the California Book Award; her books have been long- and finalist-listed for the National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and England’s T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry. Her work, translated into seventeen languages, appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, and ten editions of The Best American Poetry. A former chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2019.

Event Details

Rainier Arts Center

3515 S Alaska St, Seattle, WA 98118

View directions.

Know Before You Go

Can't find your tickets?

All tickets have been emailed for this event, so be sure to check your inbox for an email from [email protected]. Email or call us at 206-621-2230 x10 if you can’t find them.

For in-person attendance: Your e-tickets come attached in a PDF with your ticket order confirmation email. Present on your mobile device or bring your printed ticket to the venue the night of the event.

For online attendance: If you purchased a digital pass, SAL will send a pre-event reminder email with instructions to log in and access the online stream on the day of the event. The night of your event, return to lectures.org/event/jane-hirshfield and enter the password where prompted. The program begins at 7:30 p.m. (PT) and will be available for viewing for a week after the event.

If you have opted out of receiving SAL emails, you will miss this important information—please email us at [email protected] and we will assist you.

Seating in the Hall

For the in-person event, the lobby doors, SAL Box Office, and auditorium doors open at 6:30 p.m. (PT).

All seating is General Admission by section with the exception of Grand Patron seats, which are reserved.

Late seating is permitted at SAL events. However, your seat is not guaranteed after the program has begun.

Have a question for the speaker?

Want to ask our speaker something? We invite you to submit questions for our Q&A. Check your pre-event email for a link!

Books

All Poetry Series, Create Your Own Series, and Super SAL subscribers receive a copy of The Asking, shipped to their doors by our partner bookstore. Please note: complimentary subscriptions and single tickets do not include the book.

Our partner bookstore, Open Books, will have books available for purchase at their table in the lobby and on their website.

Patrons & Grand Patrons, Have a Drink on SAL!

Patron & Grand Patron seating includes a pre-event drink ticket! Check your pre-event email for details.

Need an exchange?

Please note: in-person tickets do not include digital access. (Curious to learn why? Check out our FAQ.)

If you need to exchange your in-person ticket for a digital pass, SAL kindly asks that you please contact the box office before noon on the day of your event.

Tickets and subscriptions are non-refundable.

Transportation & Parking

This event will be held at the Rainier Arts Center.

Rainier Arts Center is Southeast Seattle’s community performing arts center, which overlooks Columbia Park at the gateway to Columbia City. The Center is located at the corner of Rainier Ave S and S Alaska St.

By Car

Click here for directions.

By Public Transit

The Center is three blocks from the Columbia City Light Rail Station and is served by King County Metro bus routes #7 and #50.

Parking

The parking lot can accommodate 15 vehicles; additional parking is available on the street.

Accessibility

Open Captioning is an option for people who have hearing losses, where a captioning screen displaying the words that are spoken or sung is placed on stage. To make a request for open captioning, please contact us at [email protected] or 206.621.2230×10. Please note: for in-person captioning at Langston, we appreciate a two-week advance notice to allow us time to secure captioning services. 

Closed Captioning is an option for people who have hearing loss, where captioning displays the words that are spoken or sung at the bottom of the video during an online event. Captioning is available for all online events; click the “CC” button to view captions during the event.

Sign Language Interpretation is available upon request for Deaf, DeafBlind, and hard of hearing individuals at all in-person and online events. To make a request for interpretation, please contact us at [email protected] or 206.621.2230×10, or select “Sign Language Interpretation” from the Accessibility section during your ticket checkout process and we will contact you to confirm details. Please note: we appreciate a two-week advance notice to allow us time to secure interpretation

Assistive Listening Devices (ALDs) are devices that people with hearing loss use in conjunction with their hearing device (hearing aids or cochlear implants). To pick up a headset, check in with the SAL Box Office when you arrive.

Wheelchair Accessible Seating and Accessible Restrooms are available in the theatre, which complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act. To reserve seating for a specific mobility concern, please contact us at [email protected] or 206.621.2230×10, or select “Wheelchair Accessible or Alternative Seating Options” during ticket checkout, and we will contact you to confirm details.

Guide and service dogs are welcome.

We are pleased to offer these accessibility services at our venues, and they are provided at no additional cost to ticket holders. Please contact us with any questions and feedback about how we can be more accessible and inclusive. Our Patron Services Manager is available at [email protected], or Monday-Friday from 10:00am – 5:00pm at 206.621.2230×10.

For more accessibility information, please head to lectures.org/accessibility. If you would like to make accessibility arrangements you do not see listed here, please contact our box office or select “Other Accommodations” from the Accessibility section during your ticket checkout process, and we will contact you to confirm details.

Sponsors

Poetry Series Sponsor

Charles B. & Barbara Wright