A profile of New Yorker poet Jane Hirshfield, “The Zen poet of Mill Valley,” in the Marin Independent Journal:

If you’re a poet, and you want to get read by a lot of people, which doesn’t happen very often in the esoteric world of poetry, you have to get published in the New Yorker.

For a poet, that would be the equivalent of a musician having a pop radio hit, an actor landing a part in a blockbuster movie, a grand slam in the major leagues.

Marin poet Jane Hirshfield has experienced that rare feeling of reaching a mass audience, of being at the top of her game, many times.

“The thing about having a poem in the New Yorker is that it’s read by more people than anywhere else,” she said as she sat cross-legged, lotus-like, barefoot, with her back to a mullioned window overlooking the immaculately-tended garden of her cottage in Mill Valley, home for the past 22 years….

Jane, sister in arms, I’m delighted for you, and I’m not being sarcastic (I rarely am, in print anyway), but did you have to be sitting “cross-legged, lotuslike, barefoot,” against a garden backdrop? It seems only steps away from weeding in a dramatic velvet dress, and we all know how much ridicule that can provoke. And further fame. On second thought, wear the velvet—it works! Now, everyone, give yourself the treat of reading some Hirshfield poems. Then help the undeniably needy and deserving cause of poetry in general, and Hirshfield via the trusty trickle-down effect, by adopting her through the Academy of American Poets website. She might give you some leeks, plum tomatoes, or spare ladybugs, if you’re lucky.