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The Selected Poems Of Donald Hall: An American Master's Handpicked Verse―Rich with Humor and Moving Poetry
Former poet laureate Donald Hall selects his essential work from a moving and brilliant life in poetry.
“When I was twelve I wrote my first poem, and by fourteen I decided that’s what I’d do my whole life. I don’t regret it. ” ― from the afterword by Donald Hall
Donald Hall was an American master, one of the nation’s most beloved and accomplished poets. Here, having taken stock of the body of his work―rigorous, gorgeous verse that is the result of seventy years of “ambition and pleasure”―he strips it down.
The Selected Poems of Donald Hall reflects the poet’s handpicked, concise selection, showcasing work rich with humor and Eros and “a kind of simplicity that succeeds in engaging the reader in the first few lines” (Billy Collins).
From the enduring “My Son My Executioner” to “Names of Horses” to “Without,” Donald Hall’s best poems deliver “a banquet in the mouth” (Charles Simic) and an “aching elegance” (Baltimore Sun). For the first-time reader or an old friend, these are, above all others, the poems to read, reread, and remember.
“When I was twelve I wrote my first poem, and by fourteen I decided that’s what I’d do my whole life. I don’t regret it. ” ― from the afterword by Donald Hall
Donald Hall was an American master, one of the nation’s most beloved and accomplished poets. Here, having taken stock of the body of his work―rigorous, gorgeous verse that is the result of seventy years of “ambition and pleasure”―he strips it down.
The Selected Poems of Donald Hall reflects the poet’s handpicked, concise selection, showcasing work rich with humor and Eros and “a kind of simplicity that succeeds in engaging the reader in the first few lines” (Billy Collins).
From the enduring “My Son My Executioner” to “Names of Horses” to “Without,” Donald Hall’s best poems deliver “a banquet in the mouth” (Charles Simic) and an “aching elegance” (Baltimore Sun). For the first-time reader or an old friend, these are, above all others, the poems to read, reread, and remember.
160 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 2015
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459 people want to read
About the author
Donald Hall
180 books201 followersDonald 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
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
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August 2, 2018
I am simpatico with most of Hall's interests: nature, New England, farms, cows, horses, food, history, gardens, marriage, and death. There's a nice mix of styles, too, unlike some poets who write like one-trick ponies.
This book is a small selection of Hall's best according to Hall. Many of them are inspired by the death of his wife, poet Jane Kenyon. Granted, this is an unwanted Muse, but life deals randomly, and the God who giveth happiness takes it away just as quickly. Some of us are lucky, some of us unlucky, and some both.
Here's a meaty example of Hall's hallmark style:
Eating the Pig
BY DONALD HALL
Twelve people, most of us strangers, stand in a room
in Ann Arbor, drinking Cribari from jars.
Then two young men, who cooked him,
carry him to the table
on a large square of plywood: his body
striped, like a tiger cat’s, from the basting,
his legs long, much longer than a cat’s,
and the striped hide as shiny as vinyl.
Now I see his head, as he takes his place
at the center of the table,
his wide pig’s head; and he looks like the javelina
that ran in front of the car, in the desert outside Tucson,
and I am drawn to him, my brother the pig,
with his large ears cocked forward,
with his tight snout, with his small ferocious teeth
in a jaw propped open
by an apple. How bizarre, this raw apple clenched
in a cooked face! Then I see his eyes,
his eyes cramped shut, his no-eyes, his eyes like X’s
in a comic strip, when the character gets knocked out.
This afternoon they read directions
from a book: The eyeballs must be removed
or they will burst during roasting. So they hacked them out.
"I nearly fainted," says someone.
"I never fainted before, in my whole life."
Then they gutted the pig and stuffed him,
and roasted him five hours, basting the long body.
* * *
Now we examine him, exclaiming, and we marvel at him—
but no one picks up a knife.
Then a young woman cuts off his head.
It comes off so easily, like a detachable part.
With sudden enthusiasm we dismantle the pig,
we wrench his trotters off, we twist them
at shoulder and hip, and they come off so easily.
Then we cut open his belly and pull the skin back.
For myself, I scoop a portion of left thigh,
moist, tender, falling apart, fat, sweet.
We forage like an army starving in winter
that crosses a pass in the hills and discovers
a valley of full barns—
cattle fat and lowing in their stalls,
bins of potatoes in root cellars under white farmhouses.
barrels of cider, onions, hens squawking over eggs—
and the people nowhere, with bread still warm in the oven.
Maybe, south of the valley, refugees pull their carts
listening for Stukas or elephants, carrying
bedding, pans, and silk dresses,
old men and women, children, deserters, young wives.
No, we are here, eating the pig together.
* * *
In ten minutes, the destruction is total.
His tiny ribs, delicate as birds’ feet, lie crisscrossed.
Or they are like crosshatching in a drawing,
lines doubling and redoubling on each other.
Bits of fat and muscle
mix with stuffing alien to the body,
walnuts and plums. His skin, like a parchment bag
soaked in oil, is pulled back and flattened,
with ridges and humps remaining, like a contour map,
like the map of a defeated country.
The army consumes every blade of grass in the valley,
every tree, every stream, every village,
every crossroad, every shack, every book, every graveyard.
His intact head
swivels around, to view the landscape of body
as if in dismay.
"For sixteen weeks I lived. For sixteen weeks
I took into myself nothing but the milk of my mother
who rolled on her side for me,
for my brothers and sisters. Only five hours roasting,
and this body so quickly dwindles away to nothing."
* * *
By itself, isolated on this plywood,
among this puzzle of foregone possibilities,
his intact head seems to want affection.
Without knowing that I will do it,
I reach out and scratch his jaw,
and I stroke him behind his ears,
as if he might suddenly purr from his cooked head.
"When I stroke your pig’s ears,
and scratch the striped leather of your jowls,
the furrow between the sockets of your eyes,
I take into myself, and digest,
wheat that grew between
the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers.
"And I take into myself the flint carving tool,
and the savannah, and hairs in the tail
of Eohippus, and fingers of bamboo,
and Hannibal’s elephant, and Hannibal,
and everything that lived before us, everything born,
exalted, and dead, and historians who carved in the Old Kingdom
when the wall had not heard about China."
I speak these words
into the ear of the Stone Age pig, the Abraham
pig, the ocean pig, the Achilles pig,
and into the ears
of the fire pig that will eat our bodies up.
"Fire, brother and father,
twelve of us, in our different skins, older and younger,
opened your skin together
and tore your body apart, and took it
into our bodies."
This book is a small selection of Hall's best according to Hall. Many of them are inspired by the death of his wife, poet Jane Kenyon. Granted, this is an unwanted Muse, but life deals randomly, and the God who giveth happiness takes it away just as quickly. Some of us are lucky, some of us unlucky, and some both.
Here's a meaty example of Hall's hallmark style:
Eating the Pig
BY DONALD HALL
Twelve people, most of us strangers, stand in a room
in Ann Arbor, drinking Cribari from jars.
Then two young men, who cooked him,
carry him to the table
on a large square of plywood: his body
striped, like a tiger cat’s, from the basting,
his legs long, much longer than a cat’s,
and the striped hide as shiny as vinyl.
Now I see his head, as he takes his place
at the center of the table,
his wide pig’s head; and he looks like the javelina
that ran in front of the car, in the desert outside Tucson,
and I am drawn to him, my brother the pig,
with his large ears cocked forward,
with his tight snout, with his small ferocious teeth
in a jaw propped open
by an apple. How bizarre, this raw apple clenched
in a cooked face! Then I see his eyes,
his eyes cramped shut, his no-eyes, his eyes like X’s
in a comic strip, when the character gets knocked out.
This afternoon they read directions
from a book: The eyeballs must be removed
or they will burst during roasting. So they hacked them out.
"I nearly fainted," says someone.
"I never fainted before, in my whole life."
Then they gutted the pig and stuffed him,
and roasted him five hours, basting the long body.
* * *
Now we examine him, exclaiming, and we marvel at him—
but no one picks up a knife.
Then a young woman cuts off his head.
It comes off so easily, like a detachable part.
With sudden enthusiasm we dismantle the pig,
we wrench his trotters off, we twist them
at shoulder and hip, and they come off so easily.
Then we cut open his belly and pull the skin back.
For myself, I scoop a portion of left thigh,
moist, tender, falling apart, fat, sweet.
We forage like an army starving in winter
that crosses a pass in the hills and discovers
a valley of full barns—
cattle fat and lowing in their stalls,
bins of potatoes in root cellars under white farmhouses.
barrels of cider, onions, hens squawking over eggs—
and the people nowhere, with bread still warm in the oven.
Maybe, south of the valley, refugees pull their carts
listening for Stukas or elephants, carrying
bedding, pans, and silk dresses,
old men and women, children, deserters, young wives.
No, we are here, eating the pig together.
* * *
In ten minutes, the destruction is total.
His tiny ribs, delicate as birds’ feet, lie crisscrossed.
Or they are like crosshatching in a drawing,
lines doubling and redoubling on each other.
Bits of fat and muscle
mix with stuffing alien to the body,
walnuts and plums. His skin, like a parchment bag
soaked in oil, is pulled back and flattened,
with ridges and humps remaining, like a contour map,
like the map of a defeated country.
The army consumes every blade of grass in the valley,
every tree, every stream, every village,
every crossroad, every shack, every book, every graveyard.
His intact head
swivels around, to view the landscape of body
as if in dismay.
"For sixteen weeks I lived. For sixteen weeks
I took into myself nothing but the milk of my mother
who rolled on her side for me,
for my brothers and sisters. Only five hours roasting,
and this body so quickly dwindles away to nothing."
* * *
By itself, isolated on this plywood,
among this puzzle of foregone possibilities,
his intact head seems to want affection.
Without knowing that I will do it,
I reach out and scratch his jaw,
and I stroke him behind his ears,
as if he might suddenly purr from his cooked head.
"When I stroke your pig’s ears,
and scratch the striped leather of your jowls,
the furrow between the sockets of your eyes,
I take into myself, and digest,
wheat that grew between
the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers.
"And I take into myself the flint carving tool,
and the savannah, and hairs in the tail
of Eohippus, and fingers of bamboo,
and Hannibal’s elephant, and Hannibal,
and everything that lived before us, everything born,
exalted, and dead, and historians who carved in the Old Kingdom
when the wall had not heard about China."
I speak these words
into the ear of the Stone Age pig, the Abraham
pig, the ocean pig, the Achilles pig,
and into the ears
of the fire pig that will eat our bodies up.
"Fire, brother and father,
twelve of us, in our different skins, older and younger,
opened your skin together
and tore your body apart, and took it
into our bodies."
August 24, 2022
An Aging Poet Revisits His Art
Donald Hall (1928 -- 2018) knew from early adolescence that he wanted to be a poet; and he has, indeed, devoted his life to the art. Hall has published many books of poetry and memoirs and received numerous honors, including his designation as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2006 -- 2007. In his mid-80s, Hall discovered that he no longer had the ability to write poems. He instead revisited the body of his life's work and selected 79 of what he deemed his best poems to create this new anthology, "The Selected Poems of Donald Hall". Readers new to Donald Hall will be able to get immediately to the poems that Hall deems worth preserving. Those readers familiar with Hall's work will enjoy comparing his selections of poems with their own favorites.
A short Afterword to the book says a good deal about Hall and his poetry. Hall writes in a spare, simple, accessible style. Many of his poems are deeply personal as Hall writes about his upbringing and later life in New Hampshire and about his relationships with those dear to him. The poems in the volume are set throughout Hall's life. They show the death of Hall's loved ones including his grandfather, father, and, in particular, his wife, the famed poet Jane Kenyon. (1947 -- 1995). Hall was disconsolate upon Kenyon's death and wrote many poems about her which expressed his grief.
Hall describes the subject of his poetry as "Love, death, and New Hampshire". He offers the following elaboration: "When Jane and I moved here from Ann Arbor, where I taught, we were blissful in our new landscape and in my ancestral family place. We loved living alone in the country, with each other and with poetry, at the farm where I spent old summers haying with my grandfather. At first, Jane's poems considered how she might fit in, adapting to somebody else's century-old place. She fit. We wrote about where we lived. We wrote about each other."
With the deceptive simplicity of Hall's writing, it is insightful to learn about the slow growth of each poem, the constant writing and re-writing, and the suggestions and constructive criticism he received from Kenyon and from others. In Hall's modest words and in his poems, the reader learns of the commitment and effort required to write well. Kenyon would read Hall's poems for what she termed "dead metaphor". With the aid of her critical eye, "dead metaphors" are virtually absent from this collection of poems.
Many of Hall's poems tell a little story. They take a specific event and encourage the reader to understand it and also to think beyond. Thus, in the first poem in the book, "My Son My Executioner", Hall reflects on the birth of his newborn child and of the mortality it foreshadows for himself and his wife. In "Christmas Eve in Whitneyville", Hall meditates on the Christmas Eve death of his father at age 52 and on what he sees as the nature of conventional, unimaginative life in small-town America. Of the many poems about Jane Kenyon, I found most moving "The Wish", in which Hall imagines his dead wife's "weary ghost" imploring him "oh, let me go" to allow her to rest in peace and to allow Hall to go forward with life.
Hall's range is broader than confessional poems. The volume includes poetry about baseball and about WW II. A poem, "Wolf Knife" tells a story based upon an account of a nineteenth century polar expedition. Some of the poems have a sharply satirical tone, including "To a Waterfowl" and "Black Olives", in which Hall contrasts the love life of a poet with that of his more pedestrian contemporaries. The poems "Prophecy" and "Woolworth"s show a tone of social anger while "T.R." offers a surprising tribute to the first President Roosevelt. Two poems, "The Master" and "The Poem" offer reflective observations on the nature of writing poetry. In "Old Roses", Hall celebrates the beauty and evanescence of life describing "men and women/who sniffed roses in spring and called them pretty/as we call them now,/walking beside the barn/on a day that perishes."
This collection, the work of a poet in old age reflecting upon his poetry, will delight readers with an interest in contemporary American poetry.
Robin Friedman
Donald Hall (1928 -- 2018) knew from early adolescence that he wanted to be a poet; and he has, indeed, devoted his life to the art. Hall has published many books of poetry and memoirs and received numerous honors, including his designation as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2006 -- 2007. In his mid-80s, Hall discovered that he no longer had the ability to write poems. He instead revisited the body of his life's work and selected 79 of what he deemed his best poems to create this new anthology, "The Selected Poems of Donald Hall". Readers new to Donald Hall will be able to get immediately to the poems that Hall deems worth preserving. Those readers familiar with Hall's work will enjoy comparing his selections of poems with their own favorites.
A short Afterword to the book says a good deal about Hall and his poetry. Hall writes in a spare, simple, accessible style. Many of his poems are deeply personal as Hall writes about his upbringing and later life in New Hampshire and about his relationships with those dear to him. The poems in the volume are set throughout Hall's life. They show the death of Hall's loved ones including his grandfather, father, and, in particular, his wife, the famed poet Jane Kenyon. (1947 -- 1995). Hall was disconsolate upon Kenyon's death and wrote many poems about her which expressed his grief.
Hall describes the subject of his poetry as "Love, death, and New Hampshire". He offers the following elaboration: "When Jane and I moved here from Ann Arbor, where I taught, we were blissful in our new landscape and in my ancestral family place. We loved living alone in the country, with each other and with poetry, at the farm where I spent old summers haying with my grandfather. At first, Jane's poems considered how she might fit in, adapting to somebody else's century-old place. She fit. We wrote about where we lived. We wrote about each other."
With the deceptive simplicity of Hall's writing, it is insightful to learn about the slow growth of each poem, the constant writing and re-writing, and the suggestions and constructive criticism he received from Kenyon and from others. In Hall's modest words and in his poems, the reader learns of the commitment and effort required to write well. Kenyon would read Hall's poems for what she termed "dead metaphor". With the aid of her critical eye, "dead metaphors" are virtually absent from this collection of poems.
Many of Hall's poems tell a little story. They take a specific event and encourage the reader to understand it and also to think beyond. Thus, in the first poem in the book, "My Son My Executioner", Hall reflects on the birth of his newborn child and of the mortality it foreshadows for himself and his wife. In "Christmas Eve in Whitneyville", Hall meditates on the Christmas Eve death of his father at age 52 and on what he sees as the nature of conventional, unimaginative life in small-town America. Of the many poems about Jane Kenyon, I found most moving "The Wish", in which Hall imagines his dead wife's "weary ghost" imploring him "oh, let me go" to allow her to rest in peace and to allow Hall to go forward with life.
Hall's range is broader than confessional poems. The volume includes poetry about baseball and about WW II. A poem, "Wolf Knife" tells a story based upon an account of a nineteenth century polar expedition. Some of the poems have a sharply satirical tone, including "To a Waterfowl" and "Black Olives", in which Hall contrasts the love life of a poet with that of his more pedestrian contemporaries. The poems "Prophecy" and "Woolworth"s show a tone of social anger while "T.R." offers a surprising tribute to the first President Roosevelt. Two poems, "The Master" and "The Poem" offer reflective observations on the nature of writing poetry. In "Old Roses", Hall celebrates the beauty and evanescence of life describing "men and women/who sniffed roses in spring and called them pretty/as we call them now,/walking beside the barn/on a day that perishes."
This collection, the work of a poet in old age reflecting upon his poetry, will delight readers with an interest in contemporary American poetry.
Robin Friedman
Read
September 6, 2017A nicely trim (<200-pp.) verse collection spanning the decades-long career of New Hampshire's best-known living poet, heavily autobiographical, largely inward-looking, meditative, and fundamentally traditional in its reliance on straightforward narrative as a vehicle for quiet epiphanies about death and the cycle of the seasons. If you're looking for, I dunno, scintillating wordplay or exciting formal experimentation or risky political or philosophical engagement, then this may not be the book for you (although, for the formalists out there, there is some rather interesting work in nonce forms and also in syllabics toward the end). This book would most satisfy the desires of a reader in search of a contemporary American analogue of Wordsworth or Hardy (Hardy as poet, not Hardy as novelist): much could be learned from Hall about mourning, about the farming life, about the land. I personally bought this book in the hopes that it might help me better understand New Hampshire, and I think it does do that -- in many of the poems I saw resonances with the personalities of some of the people I have met here.
This poem (not really representative of the book as a whole) made me laugh: https://www.poeticous.com/donald-hall...
This poem (not really representative of the book as a whole) made me laugh: https://www.poeticous.com/donald-hall...
December 3, 2015
If it's hard to review books in a way that provides help to those who might want to buy them-- or not. It's near impossible to do the same with a book of poems. A collection of poems can vary so much, and poetry like wine can be pleasing to one person and leave another frowning. Poems are so very personal. So what can I tell you...
Donald Hall has written all kinds of poems during his long life. Some for children, some for adults. This book is for adults. It's a collection from the many stages of his life. The first poem is about the birth of a child. There are poems of aching sadness stemming from the death of his beloved wife. And there are words just about the normal things, of days on a farm.
Besides saying that this collection is not for children, I think the most useful thing I could tell you is that these poems are accessible. They aren't obtuse or stubborn about giving up their meaning. And if you are like me and like poetry but read it very seldom, I think this little volume would be a nice addition to your shelves.
Donald Hall has written all kinds of poems during his long life. Some for children, some for adults. This book is for adults. It's a collection from the many stages of his life. The first poem is about the birth of a child. There are poems of aching sadness stemming from the death of his beloved wife. And there are words just about the normal things, of days on a farm.
Besides saying that this collection is not for children, I think the most useful thing I could tell you is that these poems are accessible. They aren't obtuse or stubborn about giving up their meaning. And if you are like me and like poetry but read it very seldom, I think this little volume would be a nice addition to your shelves.
July 16, 2018
When asked what kinds of poems he wrote, Donald Hall replied his poems were about "Love, death, and New Hampshire." I loved his poems about the first two subjects.
This self-curated collection from Hall (who died recently in late June 2018) is wonderful, if of sometimes limited relatability. His most moving poems regard the death of his wife and his struggle with that. In everything from the small routines he no longer takes part in or his attempts to find solace in other women (always temporary), his ability to delve into the nooks and crannies of life.
Hall writes beautifully and powerfully of mourning and regret. Struggling with the loss of his wife, with old age, and with the realization of the same, in an afterword he says that most people think poets do their best work while young, but he thinks his best work occurred in his 60s. I can't disagree.
This self-curated collection from Hall (who died recently in late June 2018) is wonderful, if of sometimes limited relatability. His most moving poems regard the death of his wife and his struggle with that. In everything from the small routines he no longer takes part in or his attempts to find solace in other women (always temporary), his ability to delve into the nooks and crannies of life.
Hall writes beautifully and powerfully of mourning and regret. Struggling with the loss of his wife, with old age, and with the realization of the same, in an afterword he says that most people think poets do their best work while young, but he thinks his best work occurred in his 60s. I can't disagree.
February 22, 2020
A completely engrossing collection of some of the most beautiful and tragic verse I’ve ever read. Each poem is, for me, a lesson in growing old. Now that less of my life is ahead of me than behind, I am more attuned to the insights of this man who learned how to see in himself and the world around him the unvarnished, unromanticized pains and benefits of mortality. Such wisdom comes from deep personal loss and Hall’s is particularly poignant, having lost his dear wife the poet Jane Kenyon to cancer. He turns grief into the rawest hymns of despair.
December 30, 2021
“Always the weather, writing its book of the world, returns you to me” (Letter with No Address, 105).
January 9, 2024
‘Festival lights go on
in villages throughout
the province, from Toe
Harbor, past the
Elbow Lakes, to Eyelid Hill
when you touch me, there.’
in villages throughout
the province, from Toe
Harbor, past the
Elbow Lakes, to Eyelid Hill
when you touch me, there.’
January 27, 2021
This was a collection of simple but thoughtful poems about love, death, and nature, and I enjoyed it very much. I especially related to the poems in which he writes about grieving his wife's death. I'm interested in reading more from Hall, as I've heard his prose work is quite lovely.
February 22, 2016
Most all of us have, at one time or another tried to write poetry. I suspect that percentage is extremely high for the people who use a site like Goodreads. I have written poetry, I wrote one for my wife on Valentine's Day just recently. Sometimes I even think it's pretty good. Then, innocently, one picks up a book of the poetry of Donald Hall. It is like being a decent player on your high school team and suddenly trying to play in the NBA. Not only are you outclassed, but you see how much talent the best in the world have.
In this collection of Hall's work there is nary a piece that is not meaningful. Some of these poems though, it is something that a person like you or me could no more accomplish than, using that same example, could my 5'6" son dunk a basketball.
Inevitably, the most meaningful poems here are those that he wrote during the sickness and after the death of his wife, the poet Jane Kenyon. In " Letter With No Address" he describes for his departed wife his days, his schedule, and how he is getting on. Writing of the weather, their neighbors, but also in several stanza's wondering about where she, or her spirit, might be. Truly moving.
In " Weeds and Peonies " he describes her garden the summer after she dies. Memories of her flood him as he watches the flowers grow and yet also suffer from the lack of her special attention.
The short " After Three Years " features this
You Think hat their
Dying is the worst
Thing that could happen
Then they stay dead.
And in the lengthy " Kill the Day " her death is torturous to him. After a year he can no longer write to her as if she is still there. He writes :
Whatever the measure of joy in the day's day
no pleasure carries with it one part in ten million
of agony's vastation in loss and abandonment
Thankfully the collection also features other works from happier times. " Christmas Eve in Whitneyville " is an exquisite reflection by a man in his sixth decade as he returns to his boyhood home to celebrate Christmas. Memories of the past flood to him
" The Days " is a remarkable piece in which he sits in a chair and realizes ten years have passed since another time he did so.
Suddenly he has the idea that thousands and thousands of his
days lie stacked into the ground like leaves
The passage of time is reflected in " Kicking the Leaves" . In this remarkable piece he remembers this activity at various points of his life, visiting his Grandparents as a boy, in college, and now at the old farm in his fifth second year, realizing he now has surpassed his Father who died at this same age.
" The Day I Was Older " also finds Hall reflecting on his Father and Mother. He writes:
Last night at supper time I outlived my Father, enduring
the year, month, day, hour, and moment
when he lay back on a hospital bed in the guest room
And then continues .....
............Now I have waked
More mornings to frost whitening the grass,
read the newspaper more times, and stood more times
My hand on a doorknob without opening the door.
This, as I review it, becomes even more treasured a collection in my mind. I think it shall be five stars.
In this collection of Hall's work there is nary a piece that is not meaningful. Some of these poems though, it is something that a person like you or me could no more accomplish than, using that same example, could my 5'6" son dunk a basketball.
Inevitably, the most meaningful poems here are those that he wrote during the sickness and after the death of his wife, the poet Jane Kenyon. In " Letter With No Address" he describes for his departed wife his days, his schedule, and how he is getting on. Writing of the weather, their neighbors, but also in several stanza's wondering about where she, or her spirit, might be. Truly moving.
In " Weeds and Peonies " he describes her garden the summer after she dies. Memories of her flood him as he watches the flowers grow and yet also suffer from the lack of her special attention.
The short " After Three Years " features this
You Think hat their
Dying is the worst
Thing that could happen
Then they stay dead.
And in the lengthy " Kill the Day " her death is torturous to him. After a year he can no longer write to her as if she is still there. He writes :
Whatever the measure of joy in the day's day
no pleasure carries with it one part in ten million
of agony's vastation in loss and abandonment
Thankfully the collection also features other works from happier times. " Christmas Eve in Whitneyville " is an exquisite reflection by a man in his sixth decade as he returns to his boyhood home to celebrate Christmas. Memories of the past flood to him
" The Days " is a remarkable piece in which he sits in a chair and realizes ten years have passed since another time he did so.
Suddenly he has the idea that thousands and thousands of his
days lie stacked into the ground like leaves
The passage of time is reflected in " Kicking the Leaves" . In this remarkable piece he remembers this activity at various points of his life, visiting his Grandparents as a boy, in college, and now at the old farm in his fifth second year, realizing he now has surpassed his Father who died at this same age.
" The Day I Was Older " also finds Hall reflecting on his Father and Mother. He writes:
Last night at supper time I outlived my Father, enduring
the year, month, day, hour, and moment
when he lay back on a hospital bed in the guest room
And then continues .....
............Now I have waked
More mornings to frost whitening the grass,
read the newspaper more times, and stood more times
My hand on a doorknob without opening the door.
This, as I review it, becomes even more treasured a collection in my mind. I think it shall be five stars.
March 30, 2024
Donald Hall says he writes about "death, love, and New Hampshire", and this seems generally right. There are case studies of (fictional?) people, landscapes, and stories of his life. My favorite poems of his are probably the poems about his wife, Jane Kenyon (especially those written in the years just after she died). His later poems (after 2000 or so) are a bit of a mixed bag. For example, he seems to devote an inordinate amount of time reflecting on his ability to sleep with (much) younger women without really having anything interesting to say about it.
January 18, 2016
Now in his 80s, this former Poet Laureate claims he has lost his touch with poetry (although he is still writing prose...most recently a book of essays). He's lost a lot of other things along the way, including his wife at 47. Yet the imagery captured in his poetry assures his readers that much remains and much has been shared of his life through his carefully selected words.
In the Afterword that appears at the end of "The Selected Poems of Donald Hall" -- as well as in the November/December 2015 issue of "Poets & Writers" magazine -- when asked "What do you write about anyway?" Hall replies "love, death, and New Hampshire." Indeed, it is through his surrounding landscape (New Hampshire) that he is able to bring forth the deeper sentiments that linger just below the surface of a life.
Two of my favorites from this collection, "Kicking the Leaves" and "The Stump" seem to embody all that is the landscape, as well as family, memories, love, and death. It is through the language of trees, leaves, and the mountains that Hall best expresses his love, anxiety, despair, and coping skills. Many of the poems focus on the death of his wife and her absence. I must admit I tend to favor the ones that speak more of childhood clocks, Holsteins, and haying. For me, they present the wider epic vision of a life well lived.
In this collection, a survey of his entire career, Hall has selected what he thinks are his best, from a life of poetry that began when he was 12 and continued more than 60 years. This is a glimpse of a poet's life, but one that cuts deep and wide.
In the Afterword that appears at the end of "The Selected Poems of Donald Hall" -- as well as in the November/December 2015 issue of "Poets & Writers" magazine -- when asked "What do you write about anyway?" Hall replies "love, death, and New Hampshire." Indeed, it is through his surrounding landscape (New Hampshire) that he is able to bring forth the deeper sentiments that linger just below the surface of a life.
Two of my favorites from this collection, "Kicking the Leaves" and "The Stump" seem to embody all that is the landscape, as well as family, memories, love, and death. It is through the language of trees, leaves, and the mountains that Hall best expresses his love, anxiety, despair, and coping skills. Many of the poems focus on the death of his wife and her absence. I must admit I tend to favor the ones that speak more of childhood clocks, Holsteins, and haying. For me, they present the wider epic vision of a life well lived.
In this collection, a survey of his entire career, Hall has selected what he thinks are his best, from a life of poetry that began when he was 12 and continued more than 60 years. This is a glimpse of a poet's life, but one that cuts deep and wide.
August 18, 2019
I would've really liked it, but I found he sounded like a dirty old man in many of his poems. Call me a prude, but I can only handle so many poems in which a septuagenarian writes of his sex life using the f-word. Yeesh. I did, however, like the stuff about baseball or nature, like this:
Digging
One midnight, after a day when lilies
lift themselves out of the ground while you watch them,
and you come into the house at dark
your fingers grubby with digging, your eyes
vague with the pleasure of digging,
let a wind raised from the South
climb through your bedroom window, lift you in its arms
—you have become as small as a seed—
and carry you out of the house, over the black garden,
spinning and fluttering,
and drop you in cracked ground.
The dirt will be cool, rough to your clasped skin
like a man you have never known.
You will die into the ground
in a dead sleep, surrendered to water.
You will wake suffering
a widening pain in your side, a breach
gapped in your tight ribs
where a green shoot struggles to lift itself upward
through the tomb of your dead flesh
to the sun, to the air of your garden
where you will blossom
in the shape of your own self, thoughtless
with flowers, speaking
to bees, in the language of green and yellow, white and red.
Digging
One midnight, after a day when lilies
lift themselves out of the ground while you watch them,
and you come into the house at dark
your fingers grubby with digging, your eyes
vague with the pleasure of digging,
let a wind raised from the South
climb through your bedroom window, lift you in its arms
—you have become as small as a seed—
and carry you out of the house, over the black garden,
spinning and fluttering,
and drop you in cracked ground.
The dirt will be cool, rough to your clasped skin
like a man you have never known.
You will die into the ground
in a dead sleep, surrendered to water.
You will wake suffering
a widening pain in your side, a breach
gapped in your tight ribs
where a green shoot struggles to lift itself upward
through the tomb of your dead flesh
to the sun, to the air of your garden
where you will blossom
in the shape of your own self, thoughtless
with flowers, speaking
to bees, in the language of green and yellow, white and red.
January 21, 2016
Reading The Selected Poems of Donald Hall took me to a place where the bones of New England were exposed with love and dignity. Familiar mountain names conjured up post card pictures in my mind, but the words of the poet gave personality to those pictures. “Ox Cart Man” took me full circle in that man’s life. “Old Timer’s Day” reminded me of a very special Number Nine. And, finally, “Love Is Like Sounds” left me this:
Love is like sounds, whose last reverberations
Hang on the leaves of strange trees, on mountains
As distant as the curving of the earth
Where the snow hangs still in the middle of the air.
Poet Laureate of the United States from 2006 to 2007, Donald Hall, now in his late eighties, handpicked this selection of his poems for inclusion in this collection. He says, “A friend insists that no one should publish a poem written after eighty. I hope I wrote good things, young and old, but my best work came in my early sixties. Over the years, I felt my poems gradually diminish. I lost my powers as everyone does. It was frustrating at first, but finally I accepted the inevitable. How could I complain after seventy years of ambition and pleasure?”
This collection shows no diminishing of this poet. It is ambitious and a pleasure to read.
Love is like sounds, whose last reverberations
Hang on the leaves of strange trees, on mountains
As distant as the curving of the earth
Where the snow hangs still in the middle of the air.
Poet Laureate of the United States from 2006 to 2007, Donald Hall, now in his late eighties, handpicked this selection of his poems for inclusion in this collection. He says, “A friend insists that no one should publish a poem written after eighty. I hope I wrote good things, young and old, but my best work came in my early sixties. Over the years, I felt my poems gradually diminish. I lost my powers as everyone does. It was frustrating at first, but finally I accepted the inevitable. How could I complain after seventy years of ambition and pleasure?”
This collection shows no diminishing of this poet. It is ambitious and a pleasure to read.
April 20, 2019
I don't know if this is in chronological order or not but I found the later poems stronger than the early, and the ones of life after the death of his second wife both powerful and poignant. Personally, I prefer his essays to his poetry, however this still stands on its own. 3.5/5
May 23, 2016
Perhaps the very strongest poems here are the rhymed and metered elegies to Jane Kenyon, inspired by the poems Thomas Hardy wrote in the wake of his first wife's death.
January 29, 2022
It is a lost road into the air.
It is a desert
among sugar beets.
The tiny wings
of the Spitfires of nineteen forty-one
sink under mud in the Channel.
Near the road a brick pillbox
totters under a load of grass,
where Home Guards waited
in the fogs of the invasion winter.
Good night, old ruined war.
In Poland the wind rides on a jagged wall.
Smoke rises from the stones; no, it is mist.
* * *
Then the knee of the wave
turned to stone.
By the cliff of her flank
I anchored,
in the darkness of harbors
laid-by.
* * *
It discovers by night
what the day hid from it.
Sometimes it turns itself
into an animal.
In summer it takes long walks
by itself where meadows
fold back from ditches.
Once it stood still
in a quiet row of machines.
Who knows
what it is thinking?
* * *
Pale gold of the walls, gold
of the centres of daisies, yellow roses
pressing from a clear bowl. All day
we lay on the bed, my hand
stroking the deep
gold of your thighs and your back.
We slept and woke
entering the golden room together,
lay down in it breathing
quickly, then
slowly again,
caressing and dozing, your hand sleepily
touching my hair now.
We made in those days
tiny identical rooms inside our bodies
which the men who uncover our graves
will find in a thousand years,
shining and whole.
* * *
She was all around me
like a rainy day,
and though I walked bareheaded
I was not wet. I walked
on a bare path
singing light songs
about women.
A blue wing tilts at the edge of the sea.
The wreck of the small
airplanes sleeps
drifted to the high-tide line,
tangled in seaweed, green
glass from the sea.
The tiny skeleton inside
remembers the falter of engines, the cry
without answer,
the long dying
into and out of the sea.
* * *
Back of the dam, under
a flat pad
of water, church
bells ring
in the ears of lilies,
a child's swing
curls in the current
of a yard, horned
pout sleep
in a green
mailbox, and
a boy walks
from a screened
porch beneath
the man-shaped
leaves of an oak
down the street looking
at the town
of Hill that water
covered forty
years ago,
and the screen
door shuts
under dream water.
* * *
Like an oarless boat through midnight's watery
ghosthouse, through lumens and shallows
of shadow, under smoky light that the full moon
reflects from snowfields to ceilings, I drift
on January's tide from room to room, pausing
by the wooden clock with its pendulum that keeps
the beat like a heart certainly beating, to wait
for the pause allowing passage
to repose's shore - where all waves halt
upreared and stony as the moon's Mycenaean lions.
* * *
it is a snail
that hesitates on a hedge
under eucalyptus
it is a fist
it is a wooden propeller
it is an accurate nose
like an adding machine
powered by perfect electricity
yet it has no cord
it does not run on batteries
it is an observatory
for observing moons and planets
I watch it
revolve
it is a birchbark canoe
Abenakis paddle
it is the egg
of a demonstrable bird
do not sit on this nose
it might hatch
* * *
You think that their
dying is the worst
thing that could happen.
Then they stay dead.
*
In a week or ten days
the snow and ice will melt
from Graveyard Road.
I'm coming! Don't move!
* * *
After she died I screamed,
upsetting the depressed dog.
Now I no longer
address the wall
covered with photographs,
nor call her "you"
in a poem. She recedes
into the granite museum
of JANE KENYON 1947-1995.
Nursing her I felt alive
in the animal moment,
scenting the predator.
Her death was the worst thing
that could happen,
and caring for her was best.
I long for the absent
woman of different faces
who makes metaphors
and chops onions, drinking
a glass of Chardonnay,
oiling the wok, humming
to herself, maybe thinking
to herself, maybe thinking
how to conclude a poem.
When I make love now,
something is awry.
Last autumn a woman said,
"I mistrust your ardor."
This winter in Florida
I loathed the old couples
my age who promenaded
in their slack flesh
holding hands. I gazed
at young women with outrage
and desire - unable to love
or to work, or to die.
Hours are slow and weeks
rapid in their vacancy.
Each day lapses as I recite
my complaints. Lust is grief
that has turned over in bed
to look the other way.
It is a desert
among sugar beets.
The tiny wings
of the Spitfires of nineteen forty-one
sink under mud in the Channel.
Near the road a brick pillbox
totters under a load of grass,
where Home Guards waited
in the fogs of the invasion winter.
Good night, old ruined war.
In Poland the wind rides on a jagged wall.
Smoke rises from the stones; no, it is mist.
- An Airstrip in Essex, 1960, pg. 7
* * *
Then the knee of the wave
turned to stone.
By the cliff of her flank
I anchored,
in the darkness of harbors
laid-by.
- "Reclining Figure", pg. 13
* * *
It discovers by night
what the day hid from it.
Sometimes it turns itself
into an animal.
In summer it takes long walks
by itself where meadows
fold back from ditches.
Once it stood still
in a quiet row of machines.
Who knows
what it is thinking?
- The Poem, pg. 20
* * *
Pale gold of the walls, gold
of the centres of daisies, yellow roses
pressing from a clear bowl. All day
we lay on the bed, my hand
stroking the deep
gold of your thighs and your back.
We slept and woke
entering the golden room together,
lay down in it breathing
quickly, then
slowly again,
caressing and dozing, your hand sleepily
touching my hair now.
We made in those days
tiny identical rooms inside our bodies
which the men who uncover our graves
will find in a thousand years,
shining and whole.
- Gold, pg. 35
* * *
She was all around me
like a rainy day,
and though I walked bareheaded
I was not wet. I walked
on a bare path
singing light songs
about women.
A blue wing tilts at the edge of the sea.
The wreck of the small
airplanes sleeps
drifted to the high-tide line,
tangled in seaweed, green
glass from the sea.
The tiny skeleton inside
remembers the falter of engines, the cry
without answer,
the long dying
into and out of the sea.
- The Blue Wing, pg. 42
* * *
Back of the dam, under
a flat pad
of water, church
bells ring
in the ears of lilies,
a child's swing
curls in the current
of a yard, horned
pout sleep
in a green
mailbox, and
a boy walks
from a screened
porch beneath
the man-shaped
leaves of an oak
down the street looking
at the town
of Hill that water
covered forty
years ago,
and the screen
door shuts
under dream water.
- The Town of Hill, pg. 62-63
* * *
Like an oarless boat through midnight's watery
ghosthouse, through lumens and shallows
of shadow, under smoky light that the full moon
reflects from snowfields to ceilings, I drift
on January's tide from room to room, pausing
by the wooden clock with its pendulum that keeps
the beat like a heart certainly beating, to wait
for the pause allowing passage
to repose's shore - where all waves halt
upreared and stony as the moon's Mycenaean lions.
- Moon Clock, pg. 71
* * *
it is a snail
that hesitates on a hedge
under eucalyptus
it is a fist
it is a wooden propeller
it is an accurate nose
like an adding machine
powered by perfect electricity
yet it has no cord
it does not run on batteries
it is an observatory
for observing moons and planets
I watch it
revolve
it is a birchbark canoe
Abenakis paddle
it is the egg
of a demonstrable bird
do not sit on this nose
it might hatch
- Nose, pg. 93
* * *
You think that their
dying is the worst
thing that could happen.
Then they stay dead.
*
In a week or ten days
the snow and ice will melt
from Graveyard Road.
I'm coming! Don't move!
- After Three Years, pg. 109
* * *
After she died I screamed,
upsetting the depressed dog.
Now I no longer
address the wall
covered with photographs,
nor call her "you"
in a poem. She recedes
into the granite museum
of JANE KENYON 1947-1995.
Nursing her I felt alive
in the animal moment,
scenting the predator.
Her death was the worst thing
that could happen,
and caring for her was best.
I long for the absent
woman of different faces
who makes metaphors
and chops onions, drinking
a glass of Chardonnay,
oiling the wok, humming
to herself, maybe thinking
to herself, maybe thinking
how to conclude a poem.
When I make love now,
something is awry.
Last autumn a woman said,
"I mistrust your ardor."
This winter in Florida
I loathed the old couples
my age who promenaded
in their slack flesh
holding hands. I gazed
at young women with outrage
and desire - unable to love
or to work, or to die.
Hours are slow and weeks
rapid in their vacancy.
Each day lapses as I recite
my complaints. Lust is grief
that has turned over in bed
to look the other way.
- Ardor, pg. 123-124
October 19, 2017
This collection of poems is properly a "best of compilation" of poems from a celebrate contemporary poet and the husband of the late poet Jane Kenyon, to whom some of these poems are dedicated. As someone who is no stranger to reading collections of poetry [1], I found this book to be an excellent one. There is considerable interest in the fact that this poetry captures a long span of the career of the poet, where the poems begin with a clear rhyme and meter and move on to more experimental forms with free verse and then end in a more conventional format, showing a great deal of change over time, even if that change ended up being more cyclical in nature. For those who want an introduction to the work of this noted poet, although he not one I have ever come across before, this book is certainly a good way to do that, and may even encourage the reader to check out some of the poet's previous collections of poetry that gave him the stature to be a poet laureate of the United States. He may be no William Stafford, but few people are.
In terms of the body of work here, this collection of poems is a bit less than 150 pages long in total. The poet even helpfully explains his approach at the end of the book in his Postscriptum, the way he writes about his obsessions (like death, sex, nature, and the quirkiness of human interactions) and that like many poets he likes to write in the early morning hours. The poems themselves are a wide gambit. Some of them are highly quotable and a few of them are deeply reflective, running the gamut from a meta reflection on poetry as well as snow to poems showing the glory of lovemaking or the way that affairs are immensely destructive to one's well-being as well as the quality of one's relationships. Some of the poems even reflect a view of a vengeful and just God executing his wrath on a disobedient world, which is quite a striking contrast. Many of these poems, though, dwell on death and decay and the ravages of time and memory, which suits this melancholy and autumnal/wintry poet well. You will not appreciate this book very well if you want sunny and cheery poems, but if you want darker and more reflective poems, this will definitely do the job.
A great deal of the appeal of this book is likely to be from readers of poetry who are fond of Jane Kenyon and want to see how her other half lives. The poet reflects on how after her untimely and early death to leukemia at 47 that he wrote nothing about her death for a period of about five years and that she and him were the first readers of each other's poetry in a deeply collaborative process. Not being particularly familiar with the works of Jane Kenyon, I found them of interest in the way that they showed the author as a human being of deep feeling, but those readers who are interested in the relationship between writers will find much of interest here in that regard. To be sure, the relationship between these two poets is not nearly as dramatic as that between the late Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, who later became poet laureate of Great Britain for his troubles, but the book is certainly one that can be celebrated for the context it has in the relationship between poets and those around them, for this is a poet who certainly draws from his own life in crafting his poems to an admirable degree.
[1] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
June 17, 2021
I love poetry. I also happen to think it's the one field of literature with the worst and best writing.
So when I find a master, with power, accessibility and longevity, I am deeply gratified, and Donald Hall fits that bill. This volume of selected poems, which he chose near the end of his life, is full of great work. It is also, sadly, difficult to read near the end, because many of those latter poems deal with his grief after the death of his wife, the poet Jane Kenyon, and with his anguish over advancing age.
But even those works are full of elegiac beauty, and this volume is well worth absorbing and pondering and rereading.
One of my favorite poems in the collection is Edward's Anecdote, a seemingly simple if devastating poem about a man discovering his wife has had an affair, but with an unexpected ending that is so powerful it will stay with me for a long time.
Edward's Anecdote
Donald Hall
Late one night she told me.
We'd come home from a party
where she drank more wine
than usual, from nervousness
I suppose. I was astonished,
which is typical,
and her lover of course
was my friend. My naivete
served their purposes: what
you don't know beats your head in.
After weeping for an hour or so
I tried screaming.
Then I quieted down;
then I broke her grandmother's
teapot against the pantry brickwork,
which helped a bit.
She kept apologizing
as she walked back and forth,
chainsmoking. I hated her,
and thought how beautiful
she looked as she paced,
which started me weeping again.
Old puzzlements began to solve
themselves: the errand
that took all afternoon;
the much-explained excursion
to stay with a college roommate
at a hunting lodge
without a telephone;
and of course the wrong numbers.
then my masochistic mind
printed kodacolors
of my friend and my wife
arranged in bed together.
When I looked out the window,
I saw the sky going
pale with dawn; soon the children
would wake: thinking of them
started me weeping again.
I felt exhausted, and
I wanted to sleep neither
with her nor without her,
which made me remember:
when I was a child we knew
a neighbor named Mr. Jaspers --
an ordinary
gray and agreeable
middle-aged businessman who
joked with the neighborhood
children when he met us on
the street, giving us pennies,
except for once a year
when he got insanely drunk
and the police took him.
One time he beat his year-old
daughter with a broomstick,
breaking a rib bone, and as
she screamed she kept crawling
back to her father: where else
should she look for comfort?
So when I find a master, with power, accessibility and longevity, I am deeply gratified, and Donald Hall fits that bill. This volume of selected poems, which he chose near the end of his life, is full of great work. It is also, sadly, difficult to read near the end, because many of those latter poems deal with his grief after the death of his wife, the poet Jane Kenyon, and with his anguish over advancing age.
But even those works are full of elegiac beauty, and this volume is well worth absorbing and pondering and rereading.
One of my favorite poems in the collection is Edward's Anecdote, a seemingly simple if devastating poem about a man discovering his wife has had an affair, but with an unexpected ending that is so powerful it will stay with me for a long time.
Edward's Anecdote
Donald Hall
Late one night she told me.
We'd come home from a party
where she drank more wine
than usual, from nervousness
I suppose. I was astonished,
which is typical,
and her lover of course
was my friend. My naivete
served their purposes: what
you don't know beats your head in.
After weeping for an hour or so
I tried screaming.
Then I quieted down;
then I broke her grandmother's
teapot against the pantry brickwork,
which helped a bit.
She kept apologizing
as she walked back and forth,
chainsmoking. I hated her,
and thought how beautiful
she looked as she paced,
which started me weeping again.
Old puzzlements began to solve
themselves: the errand
that took all afternoon;
the much-explained excursion
to stay with a college roommate
at a hunting lodge
without a telephone;
and of course the wrong numbers.
then my masochistic mind
printed kodacolors
of my friend and my wife
arranged in bed together.
When I looked out the window,
I saw the sky going
pale with dawn; soon the children
would wake: thinking of them
started me weeping again.
I felt exhausted, and
I wanted to sleep neither
with her nor without her,
which made me remember:
when I was a child we knew
a neighbor named Mr. Jaspers --
an ordinary
gray and agreeable
middle-aged businessman who
joked with the neighborhood
children when he met us on
the street, giving us pennies,
except for once a year
when he got insanely drunk
and the police took him.
One time he beat his year-old
daughter with a broomstick,
breaking a rib bone, and as
she screamed she kept crawling
back to her father: where else
should she look for comfort?
December 12, 2018
Donald Hall looks crazy on the cover of this book. Not serial killer crazy, but crazy like an artist, crazy like he'd be dangerous to know and talk to, he'd expand your mind, he'd confuse you with beautiful words, he'd lead you down precarious adventurous paths you weren't expecting to trod.
His poems are like that too. When you read poetry, some poems are complicated. Sometimes that is a good thing. Sometimes it is not. Some poems sing. Some poems prod. Some poems plod. Some poems are not right for that time but need to age, like wine or cheese, to be appreciated later. Hall's poetry encompasses all of that.
Hall's wife died, and for five years, that's all he wrote about. Those poems are excruciatingly sad. They are difficult and complicated. They will make you weep. They will make you angry and ask why. They will remind you of deaths you have known, and deaths you will know, and your own impending death.
He writes about other things too. Happy things, and nature things. Sex. The past. "Names of Horses" (which is one of my favorite poems in the collection). Aging ("to grow old is to lose everything. Aging, everybody knows it. Even when we are young." That's powerful stuff).
"Storms stop when they stop, no sooner, leaving the birches glossy." That's so true, it hurts.
His afterwards is the most excellent kind of prose, a poet's life distilled beautifully into paragraphs. Don't skip it.
His poems are like that too. When you read poetry, some poems are complicated. Sometimes that is a good thing. Sometimes it is not. Some poems sing. Some poems prod. Some poems plod. Some poems are not right for that time but need to age, like wine or cheese, to be appreciated later. Hall's poetry encompasses all of that.
Hall's wife died, and for five years, that's all he wrote about. Those poems are excruciatingly sad. They are difficult and complicated. They will make you weep. They will make you angry and ask why. They will remind you of deaths you have known, and deaths you will know, and your own impending death.
He writes about other things too. Happy things, and nature things. Sex. The past. "Names of Horses" (which is one of my favorite poems in the collection). Aging ("to grow old is to lose everything. Aging, everybody knows it. Even when we are young." That's powerful stuff).
"Storms stop when they stop, no sooner, leaving the birches glossy." That's so true, it hurts.
His afterwards is the most excellent kind of prose, a poet's life distilled beautifully into paragraphs. Don't skip it.
August 19, 2025
With a masculine voice, Donald Hall, depicts the wellspring of human experience in his decidedly regional poetry.
So you like pretty poems. Many of his poems depict New England in winter, a view of a pond while sipping morning coffee. The flank of an aging and beloved horse. They are beautiful images, images anyone would love to experience.
How boring to just hear about the beautiful hills of New Hampshire! Alas, Robert Frost is to be forgiven for that. But Donald Hall also writes about Connecticut, and the mid-west. And people. He writes about love, deep aching love. He writes about the confusion of loss. The impulses after such a loss. The getting on with life when one is old and alone, or nearly alone.
They are simple straight-forward poems that on first blush, might not seem like much. But they build one atop another. You see a life, all our lives, in his words. And you revere the New Hampshire he remembered and held together throughout his own adulthood.
Its a short impactful book of poems. If you see it in your local shop, buy it and spend a week or two with it. Read a few each day and they will tattoo themselves onto your soul.
So you like pretty poems. Many of his poems depict New England in winter, a view of a pond while sipping morning coffee. The flank of an aging and beloved horse. They are beautiful images, images anyone would love to experience.
How boring to just hear about the beautiful hills of New Hampshire! Alas, Robert Frost is to be forgiven for that. But Donald Hall also writes about Connecticut, and the mid-west. And people. He writes about love, deep aching love. He writes about the confusion of loss. The impulses after such a loss. The getting on with life when one is old and alone, or nearly alone.
They are simple straight-forward poems that on first blush, might not seem like much. But they build one atop another. You see a life, all our lives, in his words. And you revere the New Hampshire he remembered and held together throughout his own adulthood.
Its a short impactful book of poems. If you see it in your local shop, buy it and spend a week or two with it. Read a few each day and they will tattoo themselves onto your soul.
December 21, 2019
GOLD
Pale gold of the walls, gold
of the centers of daisies, yellow roses
pressing from a clear bowl. A day
we lay on the bed, my hand
stroking the deep
gold of your thighs and your back.
We slept and woke
entering the golden room together,
lay down in it breathing
quickly, then
slowly again,
caressing and dozing, your hand sleepily
touching my hair now.
We made in those days
tiny identical rooms inside our bodies
which the men who uncover our graves
will find in a thousand years,
shining and whole.
Conversation
Waking we sat with coffee
And smoked another cigarette
As quietly
Eros and affection met
In conversation's afterplay
On our first day.
Then late for the work you love, you drove away.
At dinner, just last night,
I looked at you, your bright green eyes
In candlelight.
We laughed, telling the hundred stories,
Caressed and kissed and went to bed.
"Shh, shh," you said,
"I want to put my legs around your head.
Pale gold of the walls, gold
of the centers of daisies, yellow roses
pressing from a clear bowl. A day
we lay on the bed, my hand
stroking the deep
gold of your thighs and your back.
We slept and woke
entering the golden room together,
lay down in it breathing
quickly, then
slowly again,
caressing and dozing, your hand sleepily
touching my hair now.
We made in those days
tiny identical rooms inside our bodies
which the men who uncover our graves
will find in a thousand years,
shining and whole.
Conversation
Waking we sat with coffee
And smoked another cigarette
As quietly
Eros and affection met
In conversation's afterplay
On our first day.
Then late for the work you love, you drove away.
At dinner, just last night,
I looked at you, your bright green eyes
In candlelight.
We laughed, telling the hundred stories,
Caressed and kissed and went to bed.
"Shh, shh," you said,
"I want to put my legs around your head.
October 8, 2018
Since I normally don't read poetry, one has to consider this when reading this review. I read this because of my enjoyment of one of Donald Hall's prose books and simply read this out of curiosity. Some of the poems I really enjoyed and others I just found absurd. Considering he's one of the masters of poetry, this doesn't speak well of my appreciation of poetry. However, it is my honest review.
June 26, 2018
I was reading this collection before his death was announced and finished it now. It is a beautiful selection, culled by the poet himself, from the entirety of his career. Many of the poems center on his care-giving and ultimate loss of his beloved wife Jane Kenyon. A stunning introduction and survey of one of America's greatest poets.
January 30, 2020
I don’t typically review the books of poetry I read because it seems of all literature, one reads poems we personally relate to. But this collection was selected by the poet, not an editor, and reflects what he feels was his progression in writing and his best work in his lifetime. For that, it is worth recommending to you as a compilation of one of our great poet’s work.
May 4, 2020
Slow and steady wins the race with this collection. I didn't love it at the start, because the poems were heavy and complex. However, over the course of the collection (the poems were arranged in chronological order), Hall's writing style really came together and became more concise and focused.
I ended up really enjoying this collection and plan to read some of his other work.
I ended up really enjoying this collection and plan to read some of his other work.
May 23, 2024
This guy, with the addition of Frost and Bukowski, always inspires me to pick a pen and delve once again into poetry. If you like poetry, especially Donald Hall's, you can just tell he was born to be a poet. Yes, he also wrote essays and other things, but man.. ..he just had a special way with putting words together.
August 11, 2025
I pick up a poetry collection every once in a while. This one was quite good. Hall writes a lot about aging and death - two topics that I think about with more and more frequency. If you pick this slim book up, my favorites are: "The Man in the Dead Machine," "Maple Syrup," and "The Impossible Marriage."
September 22, 2017
Made more powerful by the strong curation. The reader gets a good sense of Hall’s styles and themes (New Hampshire, the death of his wife, poet Jane Kenyon). Not every poem landed for me but there were multiple breathtakers.
December 27, 2017
These poems are not made of pretty rhythms and rhymes; they are not offbeat experimentation with unusual words and forms; they are not for kids; they are not about deep literary symbols. They mostly contain simple words in simple sentences, leaving powerful impressions and insights.
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