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Kentucky Voices
The Total Light Process: New & Selected Poems
Nationally acclaimed poet, photographer, filmmaker, and novelist James Baker Hall has long been regarded as one of Kentucky's most profound artists. Hall's growing body of work is an essential part of Kentucky's literary tradition, and yet his poetry in particular transcends the borders of the Commonwealth.
The Total Light Process collects poems spanning Hall's celebrated career as well as new poems that have never before been published. The subjects of Hall's poems range from humorous and revealing portraits of his fellow writers and friends Wendell Berry, Ed McClanahan, and Gurney Norman, to the traumatic experience of his mother's suicide when he was eight years old, to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the tragic murder of Matthew Shepherd.
The Total Light Process collects poems spanning Hall's celebrated career as well as new poems that have never before been published. The subjects of Hall's poems range from humorous and revealing portraits of his fellow writers and friends Wendell Berry, Ed McClanahan, and Gurney Norman, to the traumatic experience of his mother's suicide when he was eight years old, to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the tragic murder of Matthew Shepherd.
- GenresPoetry
288 pages, Paperback
First published October 22, 2004
3 people are currently reading
18 people want to read
About the author
James Baker Hall
32 books6 followersJames Baker Hall was born in Lexington, Kentucky in 1935. He was raised in a southern family of means and social standing, only to have a family scandal turn tragic when he was eight years old. This trauma, and its enduring consequence, would shape Hall’s life work as an artist, which began when he took up photography at age eleven.
Hall graduated from the University of Kentucky with a B.A. in English, having studied writing under Robert Hazel among his life-long literary colleagues: Wendell Berry, Ed McClanahan, Gurney Norman, and Bobbie Ann Mason. In 1960, he received a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University and shared the historic workshops in which Leaving Cheyenne (Larry McMurtry) and One Flew Over the Cookoo’s Nest (Ken Kesey) were being written.[1] After his first novel, Yates Paul, His Grand Flights, His Tootings (also written in these same workshops) was published to critical acclaim, Hall returned to his roots in photography. During this time, he became the close colleague of such photographers as Minor White, Richard Benson, and Ralph Eugene Meatyard, was a contributing editor for Aperture, and lectured widely on photography in such places as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Rhode Island School of Design, the Visual Studies Workshop, and the Minneapolis Museum of Art.[2]
In 1973, Hall came back to Lexington to teach at the University of Kentucky and, for the next thirty years, would act as director of the creative writing program. In 2003, he retired as professor emeritus, having vastly influenced the next generation of Kentucky writers. Notable students include: Maurice Manning, T. Crunk, and Patrick O’Keeffe.
Hall was prolific as both a writer and a visual artist, publishing widely in both arenas. In 2001, Hall was named the Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Kentucky.[3] He was married to novelist Mary Ann Taylor-Hall, author of Come and Go, Molly Snow and At the Breakers. He died on June 25, 2009 in his home outside Sadieville, Kentucky.[4]
Hall graduated from the University of Kentucky with a B.A. in English, having studied writing under Robert Hazel among his life-long literary colleagues: Wendell Berry, Ed McClanahan, Gurney Norman, and Bobbie Ann Mason. In 1960, he received a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University and shared the historic workshops in which Leaving Cheyenne (Larry McMurtry) and One Flew Over the Cookoo’s Nest (Ken Kesey) were being written.[1] After his first novel, Yates Paul, His Grand Flights, His Tootings (also written in these same workshops) was published to critical acclaim, Hall returned to his roots in photography. During this time, he became the close colleague of such photographers as Minor White, Richard Benson, and Ralph Eugene Meatyard, was a contributing editor for Aperture, and lectured widely on photography in such places as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Rhode Island School of Design, the Visual Studies Workshop, and the Minneapolis Museum of Art.[2]
In 1973, Hall came back to Lexington to teach at the University of Kentucky and, for the next thirty years, would act as director of the creative writing program. In 2003, he retired as professor emeritus, having vastly influenced the next generation of Kentucky writers. Notable students include: Maurice Manning, T. Crunk, and Patrick O’Keeffe.
Hall was prolific as both a writer and a visual artist, publishing widely in both arenas. In 2001, Hall was named the Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Kentucky.[3] He was married to novelist Mary Ann Taylor-Hall, author of Come and Go, Molly Snow and At the Breakers. He died on June 25, 2009 in his home outside Sadieville, Kentucky.[4]
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 12, 2019
It's weird and magnificent.
January 22, 2016
I have no objectivity when it comes to James Baker Hall. He was a superb photographer, a superb poet, a suburb teacher.
And, incidentally, on of the best describers of cats I've ever read. For example
Within the weathered barn
this drama of back-lit cat walking along
the dusty crossbeam so cat-likely stepping
over tobacco sticks
from "Mouse Elegy"
she hangs out in a culvert
I pull off the road and climb down
with a plastic cup of food
emptying it out on a scrap aboard I took down there
if I've got the time to visit I usually do
she stays at the other end of the culvert
as though she'd never ever come closer
. . .
she never lets me see her
lick herself or sleep
from "The Mother on the Other Side of the World"
(The poem is or seems to be about the cat)
a dappled gray gelding at the edge of the woods moved
into the beam of my flashlight rocking his head back and forth
smearing his visage he knew a lot more than I did
that was as much sense as I could make
of the goings on down there
. . .
now and then a snort
a whinny until
she was gone
replaced after the passage of time
by a sleek stray dark gray cat
yet to be named leaping up
as I leaped down hopscotching
through my echoes and my light
toward my hand
from "Yet to be Named"
When the sun reaches the flat rock
on which the cat sleeps
the heat dreams her.
It's as though she is
remembering something.
She stands up
and changes
shape .
. . .
The cat stretches as she
enters the shadow of a tree, pulling her last leg in
slowly. She crosses the yard as though it were her condition
to change shape with every move.
. . .
She is the only thing
This is the only world.
from "Old Places"
And, incidentally, on of the best describers of cats I've ever read. For example
Within the weathered barn
this drama of back-lit cat walking along
the dusty crossbeam so cat-likely stepping
over tobacco sticks
from "Mouse Elegy"
she hangs out in a culvert
I pull off the road and climb down
with a plastic cup of food
emptying it out on a scrap aboard I took down there
if I've got the time to visit I usually do
she stays at the other end of the culvert
as though she'd never ever come closer
. . .
she never lets me see her
lick herself or sleep
from "The Mother on the Other Side of the World"
(The poem is or seems to be about the cat)
a dappled gray gelding at the edge of the woods moved
into the beam of my flashlight rocking his head back and forth
smearing his visage he knew a lot more than I did
that was as much sense as I could make
of the goings on down there
. . .
now and then a snort
a whinny until
she was gone
replaced after the passage of time
by a sleek stray dark gray cat
yet to be named leaping up
as I leaped down hopscotching
through my echoes and my light
toward my hand
from "Yet to be Named"
When the sun reaches the flat rock
on which the cat sleeps
the heat dreams her.
It's as though she is
remembering something.
She stands up
and changes
shape .
. . .
The cat stretches as she
enters the shadow of a tree, pulling her last leg in
slowly. She crosses the yard as though it were her condition
to change shape with every move.
. . .
She is the only thing
This is the only world.
from "Old Places"
April 8, 2011
I get so much pleasure when reading this book. Jim's poetry on the page conjures his voice, intent and intimate. He leans in close and purposefully speaks his lived truth.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews