SOURCE: "Octavio Paz: In Defense of Poetry," in New York Times, June 7, 1998.

[Hirsch is a poet. In the following essay, he contemplates characteristics of Paz's poetry.]

Octavio Paz practiced poetry like a secret religion. He dwelt in its mysteries, he invoked its sacraments, he read its entrails, he inscribed its revelations. Writing was for him a primordial act, and he stared down at the blank page like an abyss until it sent him reeling over the brink of language. The poems he brought back are filled with ancient wonder and strangeness, hermetic wisdom, a dizzying sense of the sacred. They are magically uprooted from silence. Here is his eerie little poem "Escritura" ("Writing"): "I draw these letters / as the day draws its images / and blows over them / and does not return."

Paz started writing poems as a teen-ager and never let up until the end of his life...