Demon Commuter

The poems in this collection were written over 40 years of commuting to various jobs in the NYC/NJ area while balancing life as a family man and poet/performer. Hirsch says “This book of poems covers decades of my work coming out of my commute to NYC from the suburbs and the soul stress of this friction between the multiple masks of my business self and my original face.”

A buddhist for decades; emerging from a conservative jewish upbringing, Hirsch finds redemption in simple meditations on nature, art, and the greater journey path through the cosmos we all tread upon. Even with feet mired in the daily grind, Hirsch takes flight with a wide perspective to transform the demonic into the angelic and rattle the culture cage with a post-beat’ belly-fire.

In “a world networked by things yet bereft of insight,” Demon Commuter’s achievement is in its volatile and contradictory enmeshment. At once a political and social commentary that harkens back to his lineage studies with Allen Ginsberg, Steve Hirsch’s poetry speaks with “a prescient vertigo” to these times. I’m struck by this collection’s descriptive and theatrical power, staged from deep within the infotech gig economy where workers are laid low like swine and maligned bosses flourish. While others might see this work as one of pervasive Kaliyuga darkness and despair, I wholeheartedly agree with the author that “This poetry is a rescue from the death of all dreams.”

— Jim Cohn, author of Treasures for Heaven

Hirsch’s theatrical power arises from his college studies at Naropa University that led to a A.A. Certificate degree in Theatre in 1983, and acting studies at Bard College that led to a B.A. degree in Drama/Dance in 1985. A talented hand drummer, Hirsch instills his poems with powerful rhythm and emotion. His words dance with crafted attention to the music within the poetry.

In Demon Commuter, Hirsch unleashes a poetic tirade against both the religious as well as political right. One of the first poems in the collection, “Friends of the People”, is a direct rebuttal of the tired right-wing chorus that the press is the ‘enemy of the people’ when the exact opposite is true. Hirsch elevates today’s true journalists as the saviors of the truth in “a world networked by things yet bereft of insight” and plots a course away from lies and “alternative truths” to reveal the sublime & soulful side of our potential.

"Steve Hirsch’s readers expect a lot: great poems of corralled consciousness barely contained in words stretched to the breaking point. Hirsch captures the unique moment, but his imagistic precision mingles intimately with the recognition of the socio-political-historical dimension of the scenes of his life, and with a view longer yet, his lines are lit with glints of what does not change, the illumination which is for him less a conviction than a habit of vision, nothing more than the way things look.

In its most literal reading, the title refers to Hirsch’s (and many other workers’) daily routine, the commute to earn a living, the mental “drivenness” imposed by the reality principle. Taking a step back, Hirsch makes it clear that his own sometimes ill-fitting vocation is embedded in an inescapable system that privileges greed and aggression, giving the demonic the face of war and exploitation. Yet in his final vision, everything is transformed, redeemed even, and “demon” can regain a numinous glow. But even once the demon of the title has appeared in beneficent form as the sort of interior muse of which Socrates spoke, now and then he seems more closely to resemble S. Clay Wilson’s Checkered Demon in his frantic, barely controllable impulsive energy."

— William Seaton, author of Spoor of Desire and Planetary Motions