Remembering Poets: Reminiscences and Opinions

by Donald Hall

Hardcover published by Harper & Row Publishers, 1978, first edition, first printing.

Genres: Poetry

253 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Donald Hall was considered one of the major American poets of his generation.

His poetry explores the longing for a more bucolic past and reflects the poet’s abiding reverence for nature. Although Hall gained early success with his first collection, Exiles and Marriages (1955), his later poetry is generally regarded as the best of his career. Often compared favorably with such writers as James Dickey, Robert Bly, and James Wright, Hall used simple, direct language to evoke surrealistic imagery. In addition to his poetry, Hall built a respected body of prose that includes essays, short fiction, plays, and children’s books. Hall, who lived on the New Hampshire farm he visited in summers as a boy, was also noted for the anthologies he has edited and is a popular teacher, speaker, and reader of his own poems.

Born in 1928, Hall grew up in Hamden, Connecticut. The Hall household was marked by a volatile father and a mother who was “steadier, maybe with more access to depths because there was less continual surface,” as Hall explained in an essay for Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series (CAAS). “To her I owe my fires, to my father my tears. I owe them both for their reading.” By age twelve, Hall had discovered the poet and short story writer Edgar Allan Poe: “I read Poe and my life changed,” he remarked in CAAS. Another strong influence in Hall’s early years was his maternal great-grandfather’s farm in New Hampshire, where he spent many summers. Decades later, he bought the same farm and settled there as a full-time writer and poet.

Hall attended Philips Exeter Academy and had his first poem published at age 16. He was a participant at the prestigious Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, where he met Robert Frost, that same year. From Exeter, Hall went to Harvard University, attending class alongside Adrienne Rich, Robert Bly, Frank O’Hara, and John Ashbery; he also studied for a year with Archibald MacLeish. Hall earned a BLitt from Oxford University and won the Newdigate contest for his poem “Exile,” one of the few Americans ever to win the prize. Returning to the United States, Hall spent a year at Stanford, studying under the poet-critic Yvor Winters, before returning to Harvard to join the prestigious Society of Fellows. It was there that Hall assembled Exiles and Marriages, a tightly-structured collection crafted in rigid rhyme and meter. In 1953, Hall also became the poetry editor of the Paris Review, a position he held until 1961. In 1957 he took a position as assistant professor of English at the University of Michigan, where he remained until 1975. While at Michigan, Hall met the young Jane Kenyon. They later married and, when Hall’s grandmother, who owned Eagle Pond Farm, passed away, bought the farm, left teaching, and moved there together. The collections Kicking the Leaves (1978) and The Happy Man (1986) reflect Hall’s happiness at his return to the family farm, a place rich with memories and links to his past. Many of the poems explore and celebrate the continuity between generations. The Happy Man won the Lenore Marshall/Nation Prize. Hall’s next book, The One Day (1988), won the National Book Critics Circle Award. A long poem that meditates on the on-set of old age, The One Day, like much of Hall’s early work, takes shape under formal pressure: composed of 110 stanzas, split over three sections, its final sections are written in blank verse. The critic Frederick Pollack praised the book as possibly “the last masterpiece of American Modernism. Any poet who seeks to surpass this genre should study it; any reader who has lost interest in contemporary poetry should read it.” Old and New Poems (1990) contains several traditional poems from earlier collections, as well as more innovative verses not previously published. “Baseball,” included in The Museum of Clear Ideas (1993), is the poet’s ode to the great American pastime and is structured around t

Reviews

[Joan Colby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reminiscences of four major poets who Hall, as a young poet and academic, was privileged to know. His take on all four is lucid and revealing. He trailed Dylan Thomas through a series of readings and pub crawls with his most interesting observation being that Thomas remains a minor poet because his “pure poetry” often consisted of interchangeable lyrical lines that, with the exception of a few poems, never evolved into the mature vision of a great poet such as Yeats. He grasped the essential egotism of Frost, who like Hemingway, viewed other poets as rivals to be bested. He credits Frost’s work as containing a humanity rarely expressed in the poet’s personal life. Frost, a master of one-upmanship, was chided by Hall for his false evocation of the simple countryman in order to charm a gullible audience. Hall had a more intimate and admiring vision of Eliot who was an elder statesman to the young poet. His worship of Eliot’s work was undiminished, though that same emotion prevented him from being as close to Eliot as he might have wished. The most interesting subject was Pound whom Hall interviewed for The Paris Review in 1960, well after Pound had been released from St. Elizabeth’s where he’d been confined following a charge of wartime treason. An effort by other poets including Frost, MacLeish and Faulkner resulted in Pound’s eventual release, after which he returned to Italy where he had spent a large part of his life. Aging and infirm at the time of Hall’s interview, Pound was anxious to impress the younger man, anxious to be au courant to his readers, anxious about his diminishing powers and bouts of confusion. Hall confesses to falling under the spell of Pound as a forefather, more than a mentor, and he set about preserving Pound’s reputation which he ultimately realized was in part due to his need for Pound’s approval and affection. It took years for Hall to come to terms with some of Pound’s later works which he had praised, and to admit an actual dislike of some of it. Sadly, Hall became a victim of Pound’s increasing paranoia and he never again saw the poet. Throughout the book, Hall’s tone is open, warm, revelatory, self-deprecating and genuine. He penetrates the lives of these four poets with alacrity and perception shedding light on personalities that time has cast as monumental forms. The book concludes with the Paris Review interviews with Eliot and Pound.

[Jimmy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think the book can be summed up with this quote by the fictional novelist Dencombe from the Henry James story "The Middle Years": "A second chance--that's the delusion. There never was to be but one. We work in the dark--we do what we can--we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art."

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating book. I'm not a Donald Hall fan, but this is an excellent book, full of tidbits and insights.

[Ash Ponders · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nothing particularly new. Gossipy as all get out though.