Donald Hall
Donald Hall
Donald Andrew Hall, Jr., known as Donald Hall is an American poet, writer, editor and literary critic...
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth20 September 1928
CityHamden, CT
sweet son decay
Sweet death, small son, our instrument Of immortality, Your cries and hungers document Our bodily decay.
together nouns adjectives
When we put words together - adjective with noun, noun with verb, verb with object - we start to talk to each other.
water streams seems
Words seem like drops of water in a stream that has its own wholeness and its own motion.
horse autumn winter
For a hundred and fifty years, in the pasture of dead horses, roots of pine trees pushed through the pale curves of your ribs, yellow blossoms flourished above you in autumn, and in winter frost heaved your bones in the ground--old toilers, soil makers: O Roger, Mackerel, Riley, Ned, Nellie, Chester, Lady Ghost.
horse sea glasses
Generation on generation, your neck rubbed the windowsill of the stall, smoothing the wood as the sea smooths glass.
cheer greatness things-will-get-better
Every now and then I meet someone certain of personal greatness. I want to pat this person on the shoulder and mutter comforting words: "Things will get better! You won't always feel so depressed! Cheer up!"
grief loss wish
I wish you were that birch rising from the clump behind you, and I the gray oak alongside.
integrity reading pleasure
The pleasure we feel, reading a poem, is our assurance of its integrity.
voice revision blake
But Blake's voices returned to dictate revisions.
character opposites anxious
Opposites are attracted when each one is anxious about its own character.
form verses free-verse
The form of free verse is as binding and as liberating as the form of a rondeau.
summer failure flower
Each year the big garden grew smaller and Jane - who grew flowers by choice, not corn or stringbeans - worked at the vegetables more than I did. Each winter I dreamed crops, dreamed marvels of canning . . . and each summer I largely failed. Shamefaced, I planted no garden at all.
kindness eye bullets
The greatest kindness would put a bullet in his bright eye.
months three aviation
Can build plane... Delivery about three months.