On the other hand, Hirsch thinks a potential poet must also read poetry. "It means study. There is an element of craft involved. If poetry appeared in newspapers rather than in literary magazines, it would change the way people respond to poetry. Poetry enriches people and changes them."

According to Hirsch, "Poets are not necessarily the best interpreters of their own work. People who are not poets who understand the rhythms of language can do a good public reading of poetry. I like to read my own poems aloud and I have a sense of how to make them available to listeners. But I hope the dramatic impact of the poem lives in the words. I don't think I'm a necessary presence to bring them alive."

The "musicality of language" can be evident in the oral dimension of poetry, said Hirsch. But he thinks that every reader of poetry must "pay attention, get out of the cultural din around us and turn off the TV set. After that it may be possible to learn more about metaphor and the strategic devices of poetry as an art form. Sitting down and reading it is the most essential step. The nature of poetry is that words communicate before they are understood."

Hirsch expressed a special love of both Latin American and Russian poetry, but the American poet, Walt Whitman "has defined for me the notion of what poetry is. Whitman is a recurrent touch stone for me."

While much poetry is written during times of war, Hirsch believes that poems written today about the Iraq War "are important on a journalistic level. The most important poems about the Iraq War will be written by returning veterans of that war, those who experienced war firsthand."

Yet Hirsch is also convinced that poetry "is responsive to peace, war, love and other deep subjects, but it can also be responsive to everyday life. A poet can illustrate how everyday life is charged with meaning. Hirsch chuckled about a poem he included in his book called "Old Men Playing Basketball," by B.H. Fairchild.

But Hirsch has written one of his own, "Fast Break," which includes the lines, "A hook shot kisses the rim and hangs there, helplessly, but doesn't drop and for once our gangly starting center boxes out his man and times his jump perfectly, gathering the orange leather from the air like a cherished possession."

"You can see," Hirsch said, "the way a poem about a bunch of guys playing pick up basketball can be charged with meaning."

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E-mail: dennis@desnews.com