With over 2.7 million lives lost worldwide in just one year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic — nearly 550,000 in the United States alone — there are few poets whose work is more suited to guide us through this overwhelming grief than Edward Hirsch, who has said, “We need poetry to help us transform the oceanic depths of feeling into art.” Hirsch will appear at a virtual event hosted by Vanderbilt University on April 8.