“Jane Hirshfield is one of our finest, most memorable contemporary poets.” —David Baker, The American Poet

"Hirshfield's poems . . . send ripples across the reflecting pool of our collective consciousness.” — Booklist (starred review)

A profound, generous, and masterful sixth collection by one of the preeminent American poets of her generation, After explores incarnation, transience, and our intimate connection with others and with all existence. Jane Hirshfield’s alert, incisive, and compassionate poems examine the human condition through subjects ranging from sparseness, possibility, judgment, and hidden grief to global warming, insomnia, the meanings to be found in generally overlooked parts of speech, and the metaphysics of sneezing. In respective series of “assays” (meditative imaginative accountings) and “pebbles” (each a “brief, easily pocketable perception that remains incomplete until the reader’s own response awakens inside it”), Hirshfield explores a poetry-making that looks simultaneously outward and inward, finding resonant and precise containers for the deepest currents of our inner life.

This collection holds a mirror to the quiet moments that define a life.

• Philosophical Poetry: Deep dives into the human condition, from the metaphysics of sneezing to the weight of our innermost judgments.
• Nature Poems: A hawk carrying a snake, a badger breathing under the snow—Hirshfield finds profound meaning in the unflinching gaze of the natural world.
• On Grief and Loss: Unflinching explorations of transience, hidden grief, and the quiet ways we carry sorrow, finding compassion in the acceptance of what passes.
• Unique Poetic Forms: Featuring Hirshfield’s signature “assays” and “pebbles”—meditative accountings and pocketable perceptions that invite the reader’s own response.