New Dimensions · New Dimensions Foundation

The Power of Poetry in Uncertain Times - Jane Hirshfield - ND3702

April 1, 2026

1. New Dimensions Radio host Justine Willis-Toms interviews poet Jane Hirshfield about the role of poetry in uncertain times, framed around Hirshfield's 2020 collection 'Ledger.' 2. Jane Hirshfield is the author of nine poetry collections and two essay collections, a Chancellor Emerita of the Academy of American Poets, and a resident of Northern California with a long Zen meditation practice. 3. The episode's core thesis is that poetry — like ledger-keeping — is a way of taking account of catastrophe without surrendering to either pure despair or false hope. 4. Hirshfield explains the title 'Ledger' as her response to an 'absolutely unaccountable time': the climate crisis, the fracturing of social solidarity, and the pandemic, which she describes as 'unfathomable.' 5. She reads 'Ghazal for the End of Time,' describing it as the darkest poem she has ever written — a loose homage to Messiaen's 'Quartet for the End of Time,' ending with the image of death itself as orphan if all life vanishes. 6. The poem shocked Hirshfield enough that she emailed it to a friend and, in the interval before hearing back, felt what she calls 'the sheer rudeness of only despairing' given that the world is still generous and beautiful. 7. That realization produced 'My Debt,' the final poem in 'Ledger,' in which Hirshfield explicitly apologizes to the world for writing in 'such black ink,' listing a thistle leaf, a spider, and an octopus reaching toward a diver's hand. 8. Hirshfield connects both poems to humility — arguing that one must be 'humble about your despair' because no one can know the future, a point she links to the coronavirus showing that collective human action can move surprisingly fast. 9. She recounts the week of her book launch on March 10, 2020: readings in New York, Chicago, and Seattle — already the US COVID epicenter — followed by self-quarantine from March 12 and the Bay Area shelter-in-place announcement for March 17. 10. On the morning of March 17, she woke to a 'deeply quiet world' — no cars, no construction, no airplanes — and wrote 'Today When I Could Do Nothing,' observing a single ant crossing her laptop and taking it outside. 11. Hirshfield reads 'Today When I Could Do Nothing' in full; its central question, 'What then did I save?', connects the act of rescuing an isolated ant to the larger moral situation of being 'distant from my own kind.' 12. She describes writing 'On the Fifth Day' on January 25, 2017 — the day the Trump administration removed climate change data from the White House website and ordered federal scientists not to speak publicly without clearance. 13. The poem, which equates silenced scientists with rivers and bees that 'keep speaking' regardless, went viral after Hirshfield sent it to three scientist friends who forwarded it widely. 14. Several months later she read 'On the Fifth Day' to roughly 40,000 people on the Washington Mall at the first March for Science, with the White House visible ahead of her and the Washington Monument over her right shoulder. 15. Hirshfield helped found 'Poets for Science,' a project housed at Kent State's Wick Poetry Center, consisting of 21 large-format poem banners on science themes that have toured venues including Vanderbilt University, Pioneer Works, and John Muir's house in Martinez. 16. She reads 'Vest,' a poem about a camping vest with many pockets, each holding a different memory — touching the walls at Auschwitz, her sister's ashes, a kazoo given by a long-dead friend — using the object as a meditation on everything one person carries. 17. Willis-Toms asks how to receive a poem without feeling 'bullied' by it; Hirshfield says a bullying poem is simply a bad poem, and that her own practice of Zen Shikantaza meditation and poetry are 'the left foot and the right foot of the same activity' — cultivating awareness. 18. The conversation is a slow, literary interview in which both participants pause to read poems at length; energy is reflective and quiet, with Hirshfield occasionally losing and recovering her place during readings. 19. Listeners who follow contemporary American poetry, climate writing, or science-humanities intersections — or who want poetry read aloud with authorial commentary — will find this episode engaging. 20. Listeners expecting a fast-moving conversation, topical news commentary, or political debate will likely find the pace too slow.

As heard by us

A rescued ant opens a contemplative reflection on poetry, isolation, and staying receptive in uncertain times.

The episode treats poetry as a practice of receptivity during global uncertainty, letting the rescue of an ant carry the larger emotional charge.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Press play when an ant, a poem, or a chorus might be enough to interrupt despair.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify