[New-Poetry] More thoughts on Hall

[David Graham]

On Jun 16, 2006, at 5:35 PM, JforJames at aol.com wrote:

> David, first off, I have no problem with the Donald Hall as Poet
> Laureate. It is amazing it has taken so long for him to get a turn.
> But, it's funny, I like to read Hall's criticism, but his poetry
> is not the kind of work I'm drawn to. I also think it's telling that
> despite his connections and "verseitality," shall we say,
> he's never on the tip of one's tongue when thinks to name
> the best of our living poets. (Opinion, anecdotal, for sure)
>
> But what poems (or poem) strike(s) you as 'signature
> and defining', a worthy anthology piece, through and through?
> Finnegan

It's true that Hall's reputation as poet has often been overshadowed  
by his reputation as a literary journalist, editor, and performer.   
He's one of the best readers-aloud I've ever heard--one thing that  
will serve him well as poet laureate.  I hope he gets himself on NPR  
and PBS a lot.

I also have found his criticism very nourishing and inspiring.  He's  
a wonderful close reader as well as provocateur and literary  
historian.  Among his many virtues as a critic, he's been very  
willing to admit mistakes, revise opinions, and take stabs at sacred  
cows.  Near the ends of their distinguished careers, both Robert  
Lowell and Robert Penn Warren were mercilessly skewered by Hall for  
slack and pompous writing--this at a time when few critics dared to  
say anything negative; when both elders were mostly basking in  
adulation and picking up awards.  Meanwhile, Hall often attempted to  
stir up the reputations of poets who had not been given their due,  
such as Robert Francis and Thomas McGrath.

Also, during those years when his best friend Robert Bly was throwing  
out many babies with the bathwater, Hall went right on praising the  
poetry of E. A. Robinson, Andrew Marvell, and Geoffrey Hill alongside  
Russell Edson, Whitman, and Lorca.

I also am more than a little in awe of Hall's versatility.  I recall  
that one of the many literature anthologies he edited carried a blurb  
noting that he's the only major anthologist to have published  
original work in all the genres he edits.  I'm not sure I've seen a  
novel by Hall, but everything else, yes:  poetry, literary criticism,  
drama, short stories, personal essays, memoirs, biography,  
journalism, children's lit, pedagogy, sportswriting, etc.

The poetry, as I noted earlier, is very difficult to categorize.  In  
his 60-plus year career, he's been an academic formalist, a deep  
image surrealist, a Freudian confessionalist, a folksy narrative  
poet, a satirist, a Christian devotionalist, and a modernist epic  
poet.  He has published sprawling Whitmanic stuff and Swiftian  
epigrams and everything in between.  I imagine that one reason his  
purely poetic reputation has suffered a bit as compared to some peers  
has been that he's been such a chameleon.   It could be said, too,  
that his broad range brings with it a certain amount of unevenness of  
quality, as one might expect.

Personally, I think Hall's got more than his share of fine poems in  
nearly every mode.  In his formalist mode, poems like "My Son My  
Executioner" and "Christmas Eve at Whitneyville" stand out.  During  
his imagist moments he has written quite a lot of good ones.  Some  
favorites of mine would include "The Town of Hill," "The Man in the  
Dead Machine," "The Wreckage," and "The Long River."  In contrast,  
I'm not too fond of his more surreal efforts during his "Alligator  
Bride" period; and a good friend of mine says that the one thing he  
can't stand is when Hall tries to be funny.  ("O Cheese," etc.)  And  
I'm sorry to say that many--not all--of his Jane Kenyon elegies have  
struck me as sentimental and slackly crafted, alas.

Many readers feel he really came into his own in the 1970s with the  
long-lined, nostaligic, exuberantly pell-mell poems of *Kicking the  
Leaves*, particularly the title poem of that book.  He's mined that  
vein a lot in the past 30 years, of course.  I like them, too, but  
even better, in my view, are some of his dramatic monologues, such as  
"Merle Bascom's .22."

Those who haven't read his fascinating book-length poem *The One Day*  
will find that it constitutes a good argument against the reductive  
view of Hall as a rural nostalgist and sentimental lyricist.

Tip of the iceberg here, really. . . .


==========================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
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