"There are, of course, dangers in that desire to include ‘us’ with the writer’s own views. These dangers are that making us all complicit does actually become finger-pointing by any other name. It says that ‘I’ recognize these dangers and you do not. It is me who is holding up the mirror and who shifts the emotional burden on to you, the reader. Perhaps, Hirshfield recognises that danger in the next poem in the book, ‘The Bowl’." Ian Pople The Manchester Review

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