When poet Jane Hirshfield first arrived at Tassajara Monastery nearly fifty years ago, a Zen teacher told her that it was a good idea to have a question to practice with. She’s been asking questions ever since. Both in her Zen practice and in her poetry, Hirshfield is guided by questions that resist easy answers, allowing herself to be transformed through th ... Show More
Oct 9
A Room of His Own: Joseph Brodsky and the Making of a Bilingual Poet with Daria S. Smirnova (Academic Studies Press, 2025)
A Room of His Own: Joseph Brodsky and the Making of a Bilingual Poet (Academic Studies Press, 2025) makes the original and persuasive claim that Brodsky’s force as a transnational poet derives paradoxically from an inward-looking stance that privileges “the trope of the room” and ... Show More
57m 44s
Sep 28
Night Breaks in the Garret: Poems and Peregrinations with Yermiyahu Ahron Taub (Finishing Line Press, 2026)
In Night Breaks in the Garret: Poems and Peregrinations (Finishing Line Press, 2026), Yermiyahu Ahron Taub provides a meditation not so much on the search for home, but on the coming to terms with what is, here and now, home. The poet engages the distant past and the pressing pre ... Show More
59m 43s
Sep 24
Adriana Onitǎ, "Descântec for My Split Tongue" (Palimpsest Press, 2026)
In this NBN interview, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Adriana Oniță about her poetry collection, Descântec For My Split Tongue (Palimpsest Press, 2026). This is Adriana Oniță’s first book of poetry, and it gathers English-Romanian poems that travel across generations, homelands, ... Show More
40m 12s
Sep 2023
Saying Yes: A Conversation with Tara Brach & Jane Hirshfield
<p>Saying Yes: A Conversation with Tara Brach & Jane Hirshfield - In this rich and full two-part interview, Tara speaks with renowned poet Jane Hirshfield about the interface between poetry and meditation, the centrality of acceptance, and the pathways of remembrance that reveal ... Show More
40m 39s
Mar 2023
The Art of Noticing – and Appreciating – Our Dizzying World
<p>“Poetry is the attempt to understand fully what is real, what is present, what is imaginable, what is feelable, and how can I loosen the grip of what I already know to find some new, changed relationship,” the poet Jane Hirshfield tells me. Through poetry, she says, “I know so ... Show More
1h 20m
Sep 2023
Saying Yes (Part 2): A Conversation with Tara Brach & Jane Hirshfield
<p>Saying Yes (Part 2): A Conversation with Tara Brach & Jane Hirshfield - In this rich and full two-part interview, Tara speaks with renowned poet Jane Hirshfield about the interface between poetry and meditation, the centrality of acceptance, and the pathways of remembrance tha ... Show More
32m 24s