New poet laureate

[www.poets.org] />
White Apples
by Donald Hall


when my father had been dead a week

I woke

with his voice in my ear

I sat up in bed

and held my breath

and stared at the pale closed door



white apples and the taste of stone



if he called again

I would put on my coat and galoshes




From White Apples and the Taste of Stone. Copyright © 2006 by Donald Hall.
Safe Sex
by Donald Hall


If he and she do not know each other, and feel confident

they will not meet again; if he avoids affectionate words;



if she has grown insensible skin under skin; if they desire

only the tribute of another’s cry; if they employ each other



as revenge on old lovers or families of entitlement and steel—

then there will be no betrayals, no letters returned unread,



no frenzy, no hurled words of permanent humiliation,

no trembling days, no vomit at midnight, no repeated



apparition of a body floating face-down at the pond’s edge




From White Apples and the Taste of Stone. Copyright © 2006 by Donald Hall.

mm, I'm not a fan at first reading.

As long as he enjoys writing it, that's what's REALLY important

I'm with Desi: the laureate, like the emperor, is nekkid as a jaybird.

On another note, see the Gutenberg & World Library links below. Free e-books for a month or so. Lots of PDF files, so load them only with high speed connections. Whadda pain! Still, they usually show the sizes in those cases, so they can be avoided.

[www.worldebookfair.com] />
[www.worldebookfair.com] />
[worldebookfair.com] />
[worldlibrary.net] />

About Donald Hall, many of our newbies write better: [www.poemhunter.com] />
Les

Like I said before, if he enjoys doing it, then that's okay, but I'm getting the feeling that he actually thinks that he's GOOD.

and that's bad

Distressed Haiku
--Donald Hall

In a week or ten days
the snow and ice
will melt from Cemetery Road.

I'm coming! Don't move!

Once again it is April.
Today is the day
we would have been married
twenty-six years.

I finished with April
halfway through March.

You think that their
dying is the worst
thing that could happen.

Then they stay dead.

Will Hall ever write
lines that do anything
but whine and complain?

In April the blue
mountain revises
from white to green.

The Boston Red Sox win
a hundred straight games.
The mouse rips
the throat of the lion

and the dead return.

===========================================================================

I rest my case.

Les

How exactly is a poet laureate selected??

[loc.gov] />
[www.loc.gov] />
[www.loc.gov] />

Thank you. As I understand it, he is not so much appointed to write as to promote poetry in american society. I wonder what he will come up with.

I love the poetry in public transport etc. That was a very good idea.

I think he's a mediocre poet. Are you all being harsh because he's been appointed to a prestigious position or do you really think he's that bad?

Since I've been paying attention, I think Billy Collins was the best laureate.

I for one am being harsh because he comes across as being rather full of himself.

"promote poetry in american society. I wonder what he will come up with."

Hey, kids.....you too can write this stuff !

No talent? No problem !

Poor verbal skills? Limited vocabulary?

Come on DOWN to Donald Hall's

and drive away in a brand new '07 Hyundai Sonnet or Toyota 4x4 Quatrain

LOL! I don't like his style of poetry, and I'm extra critical because of his position of course. I would have applauded his poetry if it was written by a high school teenager. Just to put things into perspective ;-)

no reasonable metaphor refused !

Just to put things into perspective ;-)

Teenagers seldom write terrible poetry on purpose, that can't be said for this particular poet.


Les

You think he did it on purpose? Oh my!

Yeah, maybe he's sitting back having a laugh at everyone....tongue-in-cheek or lack thereof...it wouldn't be the first time !

if he enjoys doing it, then that's okay <<

Jack The Ripper enjoyed doing what he did.

Does not make it "OK" I am afraid.

Some people should be shot.

The writer of this poem is no exception, in my book.

www.uvray.moonfruit.com

Point well taken

I think having him beaten with sticks is a preferable alternative to firearms

Can't they just give him the money NOT to write poetry?

LOL reminds me of a show I saw where the "artist"s latest project was not to do art for a year.

remember thinking what a boon to the art world it was

I think that most comments here don't give Hall his credit due.
For one thing, how can you go on and on when you haven't even read his entire collection?

Read his book collection and you'll see how he matured as a poet, took on very tough subject matter, along with life, and exposed himself fully
with incredible tone.

As for comparing him to Billy Collins and perfering Collins, I for one am shocked . . . no comparison at all . . . Hall wins hands up and down
and tied down, and he can tie me up, tie me down anytime and read his poetry
while I stay still.

Go do your homework before trying to be critics.

Lisa-Lou

I prefer Collins, no not Tom.

Lisa, I'd love to see examples which show Hall as a tremendous poet. Can you share a few of your favorites?


Les

In this book Hall gets down and dirty perhaps after trying on and out various women, after his loss . . .

it's a great book---Collins writing tends to get pretty boring over time.
This book by Hall isn't boring.

Lisa


The Painted Bed
by Donald Hall



Price: $25.00



Donald Hall's fourteenth collection opens with an epigraph from the Urdu poet Faiz: "The true subject of poetry is the loss of the beloved." In that poetic tradition, as in The Painted Bed, the beloved might be a person or something else—life itself, or the disappearing countryside.

Hall's new poems further the themes of love, death, and mourning so powerfully introduced in his Without, but from the distance of passed time. A long poem, "Daylilies on the Hill 1975—1989," moves back to the happy reposession of the poet's old family house and its history—a structure that "persisted against assaults&wuot; as its generations of residents could not.

These poems are by turns furious and resigned, spirited and despairing—"mania is melancholy reversed," as Hall writes in another long poem, "Kill the Day." In this book's fourth and final section, "Ardor," the poet moves toward acceptance of new life in old age; eros reemerges.

Hardcover. 2002.
Autographed by Donald Hall.

Rest assurd, I don't thin D. Hall will go down in History as being a "great" poet.
As lg said, some of our newbies write better.
But one characteristic of some literary types is to gravitate to what many might classify as dull and mundane writing. To me, "good" writing says something in a novel or unique way; a new way of looking at something; or does so in a provocateurian style, and/or from an unusual point of view.
All due respect to D. Hall, the Smithsonian's new poet laureate (featured in a PBS NewsHour as part of their poetry series), he just doesn't do it for me.

E.

I guess I haven't read enough Emule cuz I haven't read anything here that tops this.


The Peaceable Kingdom
by Donald Hall

Rarely did your toenails
scrape the ceiling, and only twice
did you dial 911 when my napcap
concussed against plaster
---or maybe a rainforest's
canopy? You wore a furpiece.
Sometimes our red fitted
sheets maneuvered
to embrace us like pythons,
but I growled and roared,
becoming a lion,
and snakes slithered behind
the headboard---or was it
the headwaters of the Nile?
You squeezed to wring
ultimate convulsions
from a stainless tusk quilted
with nerves. Thrusts
and inductions were multiple
and fierce, as if a rhinoceros
mated with a wildebeest,
unmaking the veldt, leaving
scratches on the horizon.

Great metaphor, but still not "my" cup of tea.

Thanks for sharing it though. I guess readers have to decide for themselves which poets touch their sensibilities. Thanks for the link to Mr. Hall's book.


Les

It is hard oftentimes to compare poets and rate them as there are so many different styles and traits. I'm glad a Donald Hall fan has come forward.

Oh come on Les---

ok I admit it's hard to debate subjective matter like poets and their poetry

but ya gotta admire a guy who in his "golden years"
can still call his "thang" a "stainless steel tusk quilted with nerves"

and has an active fantasy life---his---"National Geographic Explorer" maybe---
when your is perhaps "Missionary."

And Elliot---thank you; I will sleep better tonight
and I agree that he aint no Walt Whitman
but still, his body of works attests to his hard work and

passion for poetry
and maybe that's why he deserves his accolades.

Thanks Talia.

Lisa

ok I admit it's hard to debate subjective matter like poets and their poetry

Something we can agree on Lisa.


Les

And then of course, Hall writes wisely with a just-right touch about the human condition of aging in the poem below. Watching my father-in-law at the edge of death this past week made me see firsthand what that looks like, and how it seemed that he was in a place half-way there for a while. He is better now, but at 87 who knows what that means . . .

Affirmation
by Donald Hall

To grow old is to lose everything.
Aging, everybody knows it.
Even when we are young,
we glimpse it sometimes, and nod our heads
when a grandfather dies.
Then we row for years on the midsummer
pond, ignorant and content. But a marriage,
that began without harm, scatters
into debris on the shore,
and a friend from school drops
cold on a rocky strand.
If a new love carries us
past middle age, our wife will die
at her strongest and most beautiful.
New women come and go. All go.
The pretty lover who announces
that she is temporary
is temporary. The bold woman
middle-aged against our old age,
sinks under an anxiety she cannot withstand.
Another friend of decades estranges himself
in words that pollute thirty years.
Let us stifle under mud at the pond's edge
and affirm that it is fitting
and delicious to lose everything

Regarding The Peaceable Kingdom, it seems more prose in short lines (rather than poetic form), At least now we know that more than his pen moved, but is it really poetry....

E.

Compare and contrast Hall's poem to Gilbert's of similar subject matter.

Write a critical essay to get at each poem and to understand poetry better.
It's always a wonderful exercise . . .

Moreover
by Jack Gilbert

We are given the trees so we can know
what God looks like. And rivers
so we might understand Him. We are allowed
women so we can get into bed with the Lord,
however partial and momentary that is.
The passion, and then we are single again
while the dark goes on. He lived
in the Massachusetts woods for two years.
Went out naked among the summer pines
at midnight when the moon would allow it.
He watched the aspens when the afternoon breeze
was at them. And listened to rain
on the butternut tree near his window.
But when he finally left, they did not care.
The difficult garden he was midwife to
was indifferent. The eight wild birds
he fed through both winters, when the snow
was starving them, forgot him immediately.
And the three women he ate of and entered
utterly then and before, who were his New World
as immensity and landfill, are now only friends
or dead. What we are given is taken away,
but we manage to keep it secretly.
We lose everything, but make harvest
of the consequences it was to us. Memory
builds this kingdom from the fragments
and approximation. We are gleaners who fill
the barn for the winter that comes on

One of the most interesting lectures by a graduating student while I was getting my MFA, was that of a 60-ish woman psychotherapist (who happened to be a fabulous poet) on the poetry of poets in their "later years," and what she found was this incredible acceptance of the dying process in their works. I was fascinated by what she presented.

And she was funny in opening her lecture . . . she said something to the effect of:

"I was in a swimming pool one day when I overhead a child in the water saying something about that old woman over there and I realized he was talking about me . . ."

Anyhow, bedtime pour moi. It's been a long ten days and this coming Friday holds something very serious, complicated, iffy and scary, but full of hope. I'm beat.

Sleep well to you all.

Lisa

For one thing, how can you go on and on when you haven't even read his entire collection?

You are suggesting we have to read all of a writer's works before we can comment about him/her? I see you have commented at length - may I infer you therefore have read every single word he has written? True, the world of literary criticism would be remarkably quiet if everyone followed that rule! Not necessarily a bad thing, no.

Awww I'm sorry I didn't mean to imply that Hugh---
merely that to give the guy a chance by perhaps reading more of his stuff
than what's available here online.

I'm tired. I hope all is well with you.

Lisa

If you get a chance, check out this volume, edited by Harold Bloom, for David Lehman's, Best of . . . book series.

Hall's poem The Porcelian Couple was chosen for this anthology from other anthologies and is quite an effective and moving poem about the fragility of life and that of a couple very much in love, but affected by disease.

This is one of my favorite volumes to refer back to; there are many wonderful poems in it.

I don't know how to include just links.

Lisa

*

Cover art: Allegory, 1982, by Saul Steinberg.

VIEW LIST
ABOUT HAROLD BLOOM
ORDER NOW


THE BEST OF THE BEST AMERICAN POETRY 1988-1997
Guest Editor: HAROLD BLOOM

Table of Contents
Jonathan Aaron, Dance Mania
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1992

A. R. Ammons, Anxiety's Prosody
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1989

A. R. Ammons, Garbage
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1993

A. R. Ammons, from "Strip"
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1997

John Ashbery, Baked Alaska
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1993

John Ashbery, Myrtle
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1994

John Ashbery, The Problem of Anxiety
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1997

Elizabeth Bishop, It is Marvellous . . .
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1989

George Bradley, The Fire Fetched Down
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1994

Lucie Brock-Broido, Inevitably, She Declined
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1992

Anne Carson, The Life of Towns
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1990

Amy Clampitt, My Cousin Muriel
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1990

Douglas Crase, True Solar Holiday
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1989

Carolyn Creedon, litany
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1993

Thomas M. Disch, The Cardinal Detoxes: A Play in One Act
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1994

Irving Feldman, Terminal Laughs
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1995

Aaron Fogel, The Printers Error
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1995

Alice Fulton, Powers of Congress
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1989

Allen Ginsberg, Salutations to Fernando Pessoa
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1995

Louise Glück, Celestial Music
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1991

Louise Glück, Vespers
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1992

Jorie Graham, Manifest Destiny
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1992

Jorie Graham, What the Instant Contains
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1993

Allen Grossman, The Piano Player Explains Himself
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1988

Donald Hall, Prophecy
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1988

Donald Hall, The Porcelain Couple
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1997

Vicki Hearne, St. Luke Painting the Virgin
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1992

Anthony Hecht, Prospects
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1995

Edward Hirsch, Man on a Fire Escape
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1992

John Hollander, Kinneret
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1989

John Hollander, An Old-Fashioned Song
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1990

John Hollander, The See-Saw
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1991

Richard Howard, Like Most Revelations
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1992

Donald Justice, Nostalgia of the Lakefronts
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1988

Donald Justice, Invitation to a Ghost
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1993

Brigit Pegeen Kelly, The White Pilgrim: Old Christian Cemetery
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1993

Jane Kenyon, Three Songs at the End of the Summer
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1989

Galway Kinnell, When One Has Lived a Long Time Alone
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1990

Karl Kirchwey, Sonogram
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1995

Kenneth Koch, One Train May Hide Another
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1994

Yusef Komunyakaa, Facing It
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1990

Ann Lauterbach, Psyches Dream
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1988

Philip Levine, Scouting
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1990

Harry Matthews, Histoire
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1988

J. D. McClatchy, An Essay on Friendship
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1991

James Merrill, Family Week at Oracle Ranch
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1994

James Merrill, The 'Ring' Cycle
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1991

James Merrill, A Room at the Heart of Things
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1989

W.S. Merwin, The Stranger
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1993

Susan Mitchell, Havana Birth
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1990

A. F. Moritz, Protracted Episode
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1991

Thylias Moss, The Warmth of Hot Chocolate
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1989

Brighde Mullins, At the Lakehouse
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1994

Molly Peacock, Have You Ever Faked an Orgasm?
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1995

Bob Perelman, Movie
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1989

Carl Phillips, A Mathematics of Breathing
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1994

Kay Ryan, Outsider Art
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1995

Grace Schulman, The Present Perfect
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1995

David Shapiro, The Seasons
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1991

Charles Simic, Country Fair
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1991

Charles Simic, The Something
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1997

Gary Snyder, Ripples on the Surface
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1993

Mark Strand, Reading in Place
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1989

Mark Strand, from "Dark Harbor"
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1993

Mark Strand, Morning, Noon, and Night
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1997

May Swenson, Sleeping with Boa
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1994

Derek Walcott, Omeros
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1991

Rosanna Warren, The Cormorant
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1990

Rosanna Warren, Diversion
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1997

Susan Wheeler, What Memory Reveals
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1988

Richard Wilbur, Lying
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1989

Richard Wilbur, A Wall in the Woods: Cummington
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1990

Charles Wright, Disjecta Membra
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1997

Jay Wright, Madrid
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1989

Jay Wright, The Cradle Logic of Autumn
Appeared in: The Best American Poetry 1995










Copyright © 2005 David Lehman
site map | web site credits

To make it clickable, just put angle brackets on either side of the url (< >):

[bestamericanpoetry.com]

Thank you Hugh.
I will remember that for next time I try to post a site.

Lisa

Hmmm ... testing just cut-and-paste of the url, without brackets, works nowadays also:

[bestamericanpoetry.com]

[en.wikipedia.org]