Ghost Money

by Lynda Hull

Unlike many first collections, Ghost Money is not merely about the writer's process of self-discovery; it is also about the more difficult and ambitious project of self-acceptance. Though Hull's poems are narrative in structure, their language is precise and intensely lyrical. The craftsmanship of the poems does not suggest, however, that the writer is content with a mere linguistic tour de force. These are poems that both strive to let their speaker come to terms with her own past and give memorable speech to the many characters who people the book's pages. Though Hull includes poems of family and personal history in this collection, she is also significantly concerned with the voices of characters who are often imperfectly treated in contemporary poetry--the wronged social outcasts and eccentrics whose testimony Hull conveys with honesty and sympathy. The spirit of Ghost Money is not of longing or introspection, but of forgiveness. The epigraph from Chekhov that opens the volume is perhaps the best indicator of Hull's sensibility: "All things are forgiven. . . . it would be strange not to forgive."

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Lynda Hull was an American poet. She had published two collections of poetry when she died in a car accident in 1994. A third, The Only World (Harper Perennial, 1995), was published posthumously by her husband, the poet David Wojahn, and was a finalist for the 1994 National Book Critics Circle Award. Collected Poems By Lynda Hull (Graywolf Press), was published in 2006.

Hull was the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Illinois Arts Council, and received four Pushcart Prizes. Her poems were published widely in literary journals and magazines including The New Yorker, AGNI, Colorado Review, The Kenyon Review, The Iowa Review, Ploughshares, and Poetry.

Hull was born and grew up in Newark, New Jersey. At the age of 16 she won a scholarship to Princeton University, but ran away from home. During the next ten years she struggled with heroin addiction on and off and lived in many places including various Chinatowns following a marriage to an immigrant from Shanghai.[7][8] In the early 1980s Hull started studying at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and earned her B.A., and then her M.A. from Johns Hopkins University. She also reconnected with her family during this time and met the poet David Wojahn, whom she married in 1984.

She taught English at Indiana University, De Paul University, and in the MFA in Writing program at Vermont College of Fine Arts. She served as a poetry editor for the literary journal Crazyhorse (magazine), which offers an annual award in her honor, the Lynda Hull Memorial Poetry Prize.

Reviews

[Jessica Freeman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A remarkably well-crafted book that I keep coming back to, because of its almost Keatsian sensibilities and outrageous use of beauty in the illumination of experience. I keep thinking how the poems should feel overwrought but don’t at all. How they are really poems with a capitol P. Different from what people are writing now it seems like. The diction she uses goes far to evoke her experiences and make objects come alive. I’m thinking specifically about poems like “The Estate Sale,” “Diamonds,” and one of my absolute favorites “Jackson Hotel,” where she writes: “I can slip from my body/ almost find the single word to prevent evenings/that absolve nothing, a winter lived alone.” When I first got this book, I just read this repeatedly because it speaks so well to her experiences and reminded me of my own life years ago in Chicago. It speaks also to the enormity of life and the underbelly of experience, while still narrowing in on one story at a time. This is negative capability illustrated so well. Although these are her personal experiences, she writes of the human condition and universality of experience that we all should aspire to as writers. Telling stories that are unique with diction and phrasing that cuts to the core of our humanity and to what connects us and our bodies to this world and to the lived experience of place. So, the loss of the world and the personal losses that we face daily on multiple levels are illuminated and narrowed in on, and all told with exceptional attention to language that is not overly decorative but fitting to her experiences and voice. I am so very glad to have learned of this book and to be returning to it again and again.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

I first read this in grad school as part of Hull's collected poems and did not dig it. I think I summarized it as "pretty nouns shoved together," which solicited a few cringes from my classmates. Re-reading the book now, about seven years later, I have a greater appreciation for Hull's syntax and imagery. I'm still not totally googly-eyed over this collection, though. While many poems serve as beautiful portraits of people and/or places, they equally lack a clear intent, context, or relevance to support the speaker's admiration of her subjects. The best poems I found to be those that were more closely linked to a narrative of the speaker's retelling, which gave them more purpose (recounting a familial story, etc.). Still many lovely lines to admire in here. I envy her swift turns of phrases and time, and her descriptions of places are quite memorable. Consider my review continuously hovering between 3 & 4 stars.

[Aviya Kushner · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great find! Lynda Hull's first book. Unfortunately it's almost IMPOSSIBLE to buy this book. If you see it, buy it!!!! I have taken it out of the library thousands of times, but now, with the Collected Poems from Graywolf (yay!) it possible to read these poems from your very own edition.

[Madeline · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like the variety of voices in these poems - there is a sense that they all might be dramatic monologues. At the same time, the sense of place, or an actual world, is enormously strong. All of the poems tell some kind of story, or part of some story, and they are both vibrant and desperate.

[Courtney · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a wonderful collection. Hull has a magnificent ability to utilize all of the senses in her poetry. I feel completely immersed while reading her work, covered in washes of color, light, sound, and smell. There are a handful of poems in this collection that sparked the sort of images that I'm sure I will find my mind drifting back to again and again. Quite a lot of heartbreak in here as well. Not every poem in here is a ringer for me, but it is lovely collection nonetheless.

I am submitting this review as an entry for the 2019 A to Z Reading Challenge.

[Pamela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Winner of the Juniper Prize, Ghost Money is Lynda Hull's first collection. It's smooth and smart, animated by a careful attention to sound and syntactic sense. Two examples: The first few lines of "The Floating Wedding" are representative of Hull's use of assonance:

Awake she's wedded to the stranger
in herself, her hands in climateless light,

nails smooth and blue. Nothing has changed.

And "Accretion," the last poem: 13 tercets; 3 sentences. As the name suggests, the poem stacks images on top of each other--autumn and leaves, water lilies, paintings, clouds--in a dizzying swirl, grounded with solid last lines:

How small I am
beneath this vast sway.

Beautiful, all the way through.

[Ron Mohring · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have her collected poems but wanted to go back to this beautiful, haunting volume--a book I still covet.