About this book
Wu Wei Eats an Egg introduces fascinating Dutch poet Lucas Hirsch. Alternatingly enraged at and bemused by the 21st century, with its traps of bourgeois excess, addiction, and “hollow language,” Hirsch regularly explores the interior self, familial history, and the physical world (in which a tree “writ[es] a poem” each day in front of the speaker’s window). Both personally expressionistic and socially engaged, Hirsch’s poems feel like some combination of Allen Ginsberg, Adrienne Rich, and later Franz Wright. There’s also an exhilarating mix of reverence and irreverence, popular culture and “high literature”—something translator Donna Spruijt-Metz captures brilliantly in her English versions of Hirsch’s poems. This book offers a unique and exciting enlargement of our understanding of 21st century poetry.
—Wayne Miller, author of The End of Childhood
What to admire most in Lucas Hirsch’s Wu Wei Eats an Egg? It’s hard to say since I admire so much. Certainly I was caught first by Hirsch’s cool read of contemporary culture: its automation and stresses, the poet’s ambivalent investment. Then I thought about emotion, the keen raw precision of the book’s evocation of grief—and also, alongside grief, love, joy and wonder, hope, even indifference. I’m struck by the structure of both of the book and its poems and by the poet’s controlled restlessness through various forms, so many crucial ideas. But evidently what I like best about this book is that I know I’ll come back to it again and again. Wu Wei Eats an Egg is profound, provocative and beautifully done.
—Dave King, author of The Ha-Ha
About the Author and the Translator
Lucas Hirsch (1975) has an MA in American Studies from the University of Amsterdam and is the author of five collections of poems: familie gebiedt (De Arbeiderspers, 2006), tastzin (De Arbeiderspers, 2009), Dolhuis (De Arbeiderspers, 2012), Ontsla me van alles wat ik liefheb (De Arbeiderspers, 2015), and Wu wei eet een ei (De Arbeiderspers, 2020). Hirsch published his poems in (several) Dutch, Belgian, and American magazines (Copper Nickel, Pleiades, Literary Review) and performed on stages in The Netherlands, India, Belgium and the USA. In May 2011 and May 2016 Lucas Hirsch was a guest at the Ledig House, international writers residency at Art Omi, New York. Hirsch was a guest teacher at Columbia University in 2012 and 2016. He also developed a poetry game app called Puzzling Poetry. It was presented at the 2016 Buchmesse in Frankfurt. It was followed by a children’s edition called Puzzling Poetry Schatkist in 2018. Hirsch teaches creative writing at high schools around The Netherlands and gives workshops to aspiring poets. In December 2017 he was writer in residency at Sangam House – Nrityagram, India. In February 2019 his debut novel: De Weinigen (Of de bankier in de buik van het beest) was published.
Hirsch currently is working on his sixth book of poetry Kintsugi (September 2025) and recently (2022) published Shotgun Wedding – a novel about mourning and friendship.
Donna Spruijt-Metz’s debut poetry collection was General Release from the Beginning of the World (2023, Free Verse Editions). Her second collection is To Phrase a Prayer for Peace (2025, Wildhouse Press). She is an emeritus psychology professor, MacDowell fellow, rabbinical school drop-out, and former classical flutist. Her chapbooks include Slippery Surfaces, And Haunt the World (with Flower Conroy) and Dear Ghost (winner, Harbor Review Editor’s prize). She lived in the Netherlands for 22 years and translates Dutch poetry. Her poems and translations appear or are forthcoming at The Academy of American Poets, and in the Alaska Quarterly Review, Copper Nickel, The American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She has taught poetry workshops focusing on Psalms and other biblical texts for Hudson Valley Writer’s Center and for Temple Israel of Hollywood. Her collaborative book with Flower Conroy, And Scuttle My Balloon, is forthcoming from Pictureshow Press in 2025. Her website is at donnasmetz.com.
"Wu wei eats an egg"
Wu wei eats an egg
What always was, is, and will be
cracks an egg
on the edge
of a frying pan
Acts according to the nature
of the beast
It makes breakfast, the cosmos and planets
the tumbling sun
It laughs at all there is
It eats an egg under the heavens
It fills its belly
It sits back
in a chair
on the veranda
of a house
in a country
under the clouds
looking
at creation floating by
As it moves, it creates
a sheep
the buzz of being, and
lazy as it is
a trembling universe
It takes pleasure in seeing
what it created, creates, and refrains from creating
It doesn’t get more active
But fuller
considering the void
Now it is thirsty
"C:Primitive data"
C:Primitive data
The primitively programmed man
the go-between of civilization
Soul adrift between World Market Buddhas
bits and bytes. Drowning in digital data
deus and Dali, gasping for breath
Throws a fit when a child cries
Beats the parents over the head
with the same ease. It reads pamphlets
like a weathervane in a storm
Cries when pets die
or loved ones or just a random
celebrity, president or passer-by killed
by a bullet, failed life expectancy
or character flaws
Lost their bearings when night fell
after the sixth day on earth
Swarming with overblown expectations
about the relationship between light and dark
Has the urge to create
based on data analyses
Once found a flat earth in the heavens
but now wonders
if there were data before the big bang
Is like the merciless, cruel and tender
universe, the naturing nature
the beast-like beast, the digital
builder of New Babylon
An island Universe
A data fetishist possessed by life
in water
"What the Heart Wants"
What the Heart Wants
How do I relate to a world
In which, worshipping zeros and ones
I never learned to tell time from the sun’s position
I nurture a digital Icarus
I defy a heaven full of error, a digital god
I express my concerns with an app, the data don’t lie
and with a crash and burn on the horizon I google the chance
that rain brings salvation, that the fall can be broken
The breakpoint of numbers
How do I calculate my existence?
Heart times body divided by bits and bytes?
Social media minus loneliness in likes squared?
I die all the deaths that I can amass while gaming
kill reality, have regrets
Consider that gravity never fails, as god is considered
all powerful by those who couldn’t
lift my heart’s nakedness
It beats a bloodshot
three-four time
