"Work, love, build a house, and die. But build a house."
June 24, 2018 12:21 PM Subscribe
Prolific poet, writer, & former Poet Laureate of the United States, Donald Hall,
September 20, 1928 - June 23, 2018.
On poetry “It is beautiful ... there is no other purpose than the beauty of it. And that is reason enough to be.”
White Apples
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
Donald Hall
White Apples
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
Donald Hall
His book Dock Ellis in the Country of Baseball is one of the best baseball books ever written, as is Fathers Playing Catch with Sons: Essays on Sport (Mostly Baseball).
.
posted by young_simba at 12:39 PM on June 24, 2018 [1 favorite]
.
posted by young_simba at 12:39 PM on June 24, 2018 [1 favorite]
He just published a new book of essays on aging that is supposed to be very good.
I love his work, and this makes me sad. box posted a line or two from Affirmation, one of my favorites of his, so here’s one of Jane Kenyon’s (his late wife) which seems apropos.
Let Evening Come
Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.
Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.
Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.
Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.
To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.
Let it come, as it will, and don’t
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.
posted by charmedimsure at 12:54 PM on June 24, 2018 [13 favorites]
I love his work, and this makes me sad. box posted a line or two from Affirmation, one of my favorites of his, so here’s one of Jane Kenyon’s (his late wife) which seems apropos.
Let Evening Come
Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.
Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.
Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.
Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.
To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.
Let it come, as it will, and don’t
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.
posted by charmedimsure at 12:54 PM on June 24, 2018 [13 favorites]
Wallace Stevens, The Plain Sense of Things:
After the leaves have fallen, we return
To a plain sense of things. It is as if
We had come to an end of the imagination,
Inanimate in an inert savoir.
It is difficult even to choose the adjective
For this blank cold, this sadness without cause.
The great structure has become a minor house.
No turban walks across the lessened floors.
The greenhouse never so badly needed paint.
The chimney is fifty years old and slants to one side.
A fantastic effort has failed, a repetition
In a repetitiousness of men and flies.
Yet the absence of the imagination had
Itself to be imagined. The great pond,
The plain sense of it, without reflections, leaves,
Mud, water like dirty glass, expressing silence
Of a sort, silence of a rat come out to see,
The great pond and its waste of the lilies, all this
Had to be imagined as an inevitable knowledge,
Required, as a necessity requires.
posted by CharlieCitrine at 1:03 PM on June 24, 2018 [2 favorites]
After the leaves have fallen, we return
To a plain sense of things. It is as if
We had come to an end of the imagination,
Inanimate in an inert savoir.
It is difficult even to choose the adjective
For this blank cold, this sadness without cause.
The great structure has become a minor house.
No turban walks across the lessened floors.
The greenhouse never so badly needed paint.
The chimney is fifty years old and slants to one side.
A fantastic effort has failed, a repetition
In a repetitiousness of men and flies.
Yet the absence of the imagination had
Itself to be imagined. The great pond,
The plain sense of it, without reflections, leaves,
Mud, water like dirty glass, expressing silence
Of a sort, silence of a rat come out to see,
The great pond and its waste of the lilies, all this
Had to be imagined as an inevitable knowledge,
Required, as a necessity requires.
posted by CharlieCitrine at 1:03 PM on June 24, 2018 [2 favorites]
.
posted by doctornemo at 1:44 PM on June 24, 2018
posted by doctornemo at 1:44 PM on June 24, 2018
He lived a long and productive life and died in his own home in the middle of a good Red Sox season.
posted by pracowity at 1:51 PM on June 24, 2018 [5 favorites]
posted by pracowity at 1:51 PM on June 24, 2018 [5 favorites]
Oh, damn.
posted by MonkeyToes at 2:37 PM on June 24, 2018
posted by MonkeyToes at 2:37 PM on June 24, 2018
I enrolled in the Bennington MFA program after I graduated from undergrad. At our “welcoming” meeting, the director gave a speech including the line, “Some of you almost certainly do not belong here.” It was a terrifying slap after an undergrad program that nurtured all writers. I was lonely and scared and my piece was ripped apart and I wanted to go home and burn my laptop.
And then Donald Hall read. I remembered “Reading Rainbow” and “Ox-Cart Man” from my childhood. Here was the same man telling me that nothing had changed. Be with loved ones, do the work, care for the world. Even when nothing is all right, everything is as it should be. It was as though all the light re-entered the room. The stars came out, one by one, to guide us back to our dorms. I fell asleep thinking about a man kissing his ox goodbye on the nose.
Goodbye, Donald, and thank you. The world is brighter because you were here.
posted by epj at 3:03 PM on June 24, 2018 [8 favorites]
And then Donald Hall read. I remembered “Reading Rainbow” and “Ox-Cart Man” from my childhood. Here was the same man telling me that nothing had changed. Be with loved ones, do the work, care for the world. Even when nothing is all right, everything is as it should be. It was as though all the light re-entered the room. The stars came out, one by one, to guide us back to our dorms. I fell asleep thinking about a man kissing his ox goodbye on the nose.
Goodbye, Donald, and thank you. The world is brighter because you were here.
posted by epj at 3:03 PM on June 24, 2018 [8 favorites]
Donald Hall was a poet I was able to enjoy as a child (Ox Cart-Man!) and as an adult, and I treasure that greatly.
.
posted by mixedmetaphors at 3:34 PM on June 24, 2018
.
posted by mixedmetaphors at 3:34 PM on June 24, 2018
Donald Hall's poetry was always amazing to me. I first came across Distressed Haiku, not really knowing Hall, and only having heard of Jane Kenyon, but I've struggled since to find anything that captures loss quite so perfectly.
Distressed Haiku
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.
posted by Ghidorah at 6:27 PM on June 24, 2018 [4 favorites]
Distressed Haiku
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.
posted by Ghidorah at 6:27 PM on June 24, 2018 [4 favorites]
.
posted by KleenexMakesaVeryGoodHat at 1:35 PM on June 29, 2018
posted by KleenexMakesaVeryGoodHat at 1:35 PM on June 29, 2018
How did I miss this until now?
posted by KleenexMakesaVeryGoodHat at 1:35 PM on June 29, 2018
posted by KleenexMakesaVeryGoodHat at 1:35 PM on June 29, 2018
« Older It's not a diversity experiment. | Is it an EP? Is it an LP? It certainly is NIN... Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
and affirm that it is fitting
and delicious to lose everything.
.
posted by box at 12:25 PM on June 24, 2018 [5 favorites]