Hirshfield writes in contemporary free verse, creating poems out of lines that may be easily read as prose sentences as well as verse. Although the style of "Three Times My Life Has Opened" does not involve any traditional pattern of meter or rhyme, it does include striking imagery and carefully placed pauses that give it an effective poetic feel. Some of the images are cloaked in enigmatic references that may defy complete understanding but still conjure mental pictures and intrigue the imagination. Ten readers may see ten different images when they consider a life opening "into darkness and rain" or into "the fire that holds all," but, undoubtedly, all ten experience vivid images. Hirshfield also uses very concrete descriptions of a maple tree toward the end of autumn when most of the leaves have fallen or are falling rapidly as winter approaches. This time ten different readers...