Edward Hirsch has built a reputation as an unflinching witness to life over the course of nine poetry collections, including Gabriel: A Poem, The Living Fire: New & Selected Poems, and Stranger by Night (Knopf, 2020). His celebrated critical works, including How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry and The Demon and the Angel, offer close, and accessible, readings of an eclectic mix of poems. A recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award, Hirsch serves as president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

To My Seventeen-Year-Old Self

by Edward Hirsch

Your friends are sniffing glue
from a paper bag
in the back of an Impala
tooling around Niles
and Morton Grove
looking for something
to escape
whatever boredom
or childhood damage
everyone suffers,

People on couch
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