Keep This Forever

by Mark Halliday

In this, his fifth book of poems, written in the aftermath of his fathers death, Mark Halliday proves to be one of Americas most intimate poets. Like Frank OHara and Kenneth Koch, Hallidays poems chat with the reader in earnest yet humorous ways and in wholly believable voices. Whether exploring grief or desire or loneliness, these poems never forget the human longing for permanence.

Genres: Poetry

86 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2008

About the author

Mark Halliday (born 1949 in Ann Arbor, Michigan) is a noted American poet, professor and critic. He is author of six collections of poetry, most recently "Thresherphobe" (University of Chicago Press, 2013) and Keep This Forever (Tupelo Press, 2008). His honors include serving as the 1994 poet in residence at The Frost Place, inclusion in several annual editions of The Best American Poetry series and of the Pushcart Prize anthology, receiving a 2006 Guggenheim Fellowship, and winning the 2001 Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Halliday earned his B.A. (1971) and M.A. (1976) from Brown University, and his Ph.D. in English literature from Brandeis University in 1983, where he studied with poets Allen Grossman and Frank Bidart. He has taught English literature and writing at Wellesley College, the University of Pennsylvania, Western Michigan University, Indiana University. Since 1996, he has taught at Ohio University, where, in 2012, he was awarded the rank of distinguished professor.[5] He is married to J. Allyn Rosser.

Reviews

[JV Austen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I got this a few years ago through Paperback swap and am keeping it forever! Sad but beautiful with hints of humor. Reread it this summer. Cried again. Laughed again.

[Be Storie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some of my favorites:
-Chicken Salad
-Clearing the Apartment
-Guidebook Embarassment

[Devin Becker · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did "like" it, I did. A few of the poems I really liked (the father poems esp.). But the self-consciousness, which is embraced, denied, subsumed, chastised, transferred (to the reader), is distracting, annoying at times. Like watching actors on stage is if, like me, you can never get over the fact that they're acting. Sometimes I just want to read a good, disenfranchised poem about a tree. But sometimes I really like playing along with Halliday.

What strikes me most, however, are the odd similarities between the "play" of Joshua Clover and the "play" of Halliday, since Halliday just wrote this big, provocative diatribe in Pleiades against Clover (whom I like quite a bit). (Read the essay here )

E.G.:

"Aunt Emily asks Binx to take Kate to watch a parade
Rheinhardt and Geraldine sing hymns during windstorm at the
breakwater
Billy visits Kato on impulse, Kato speaks of the cop she's
dating
Wesley meets Wanita and pulls a leeach off her leg at the
creek"

Now, who is that? Clover or Halliday?

It's Halliday, and I would assume those more familiar with Halliday's work in sum may be quickly able to make the distinction (and I'm not doing justice to the poem from which I take the stanza, "Plot Notes," which unfolds using repetition and a refrain, and is not representative, generally, but these are comments on a social networking site, not The Literary Review . . . NEVERTHELESS,) My point is:

There are obvious similarities between the two poets, which may help to explain the energy Halliday was able to muster to so thoroughly scourge Clover and his school (whatever that school is (I'm not sure)). I don't think Halliday is in any way jealous of Clover's poety (maybe his eternally hip, grad-school-student nature, but who isn't), I think the argument simply means an awful lot to him, that the stakes on which he bases his poetic practice are jeopardized by Clover's distance(?), his post-urbaneness(?), the general fact that I feel the need to add (?) to my characterizations of him (i.e. his slipperiness)--

Something complicated is going on, both in Halliday's poetry and in his criticism, and in Clover, and in the intersections between these schools and poets, etc., and what excites me is this might be a conflict that is actually productive rather than one that disintegrates into camp rivalry.

[Alyssa]

Setting: Again, college. Time: Not enough for fun reading. I saw this reviewed in my beloved Entertainment Weekly, where they said very good things about it. Thinking I needed more poetry in my life, I took the plunge and bought it on Amazon. It arrived; I opened it. I don't really think it was quite up my poetry alley (weird turn of phrase there, sorry). The first poem I read dealt pretty much directly with the death of the poet's father, which was very, very depressing (and this is an overarching theme of the collection). But despite that sadness, which I felt very strongly, I felt like not many of the poems I was trying out from the collection were really connecting with me. So I put it down, and never really got back to it. Maybe someday?

[Julene · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this book, especially the poems at the beginning where he writes about his father's death. The later poems cover a range of human experiences, a woman reflecting on her life in comparison to a woman in Dafur running to save her life with her child, a sculptor who endlessly creates an image of himself and on completion people comment that it is VERY tall, a poem that is a note to self about why a poem is not a poem. There is humor and insight in these poems.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was skeptical of the Frank O'Hara reference in the blurbs, but I was pleasantly surprised by the end. There's a dynamite run of six or seven poems near the middle of the book, starting with "Bonnie" that stood out. Worth a read.

[Michelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book of poems was good, but not great. I skimmed and chose what to read, instead of devouring every poem.

[Vivianeast · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like my bird with sauce!

[Llalan · Rating 4 out of 5]

My professor crush from undergrad wins again

[Brianna · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really great collection of poetry. It features a good variety of the solemn and the silly.

[Molly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found the poems on grief and his father much stronger than the ones in the second half of the book, though if I'd encountered those in a journal, I would have found them individually pleasing.

[Jamey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Strong and wonderful.