Donald Hall: an advocate for the understanding of poetry
The US poet laureate's desire to help others understand poetry motivates him to speak around the country.
from the April 17, 2007 edition
Page 3 of 3
"We were living in Connecticut at the time, and Wallace Stevens was doing some of his best work up in Hartford," he says. "I also learned about Pound, and after school I would work on poems and revise them."
Many poets don't start rewriting at such a young age, but Hall's early practice of rewriting has become a signature feature of his work. "I don't publish anything I haven't worked over 100 times," he says. "There's a great deal of stripping away; in early drafts I may say the same thing two or three times, and each may be appropriate, but I try to pick the best and improve it. I work on sound a great deal and I will change a word or two, revise punctuation and line breaks, looking for the sound I want."
Revision applies to his life as well, as does moving forward despite difficult times.
"I've had my ups and downs," says Hall. "I published my first book at 27, but it wasn't a very good book; my reputation sank considerably and I had to live it down later. But I kept going and then when I was pushing 50 I wrote "Kicking the Leaves," and that started to turn the tide again."
Yet while the vicissitudes of life may change, Hall's love of poetry has remained a constant. So has the solace he finds at home, which is equipped with a fax machine but not an Internet connection.
"I'm sitting in the blue armchair in my living room," he says, "where I tend to do more reading than writing these days." He is accompanied by a cat named Louise, whose sister Thelma died last year.
When asked what advice he would give to poets, he says, "Poetry is the thing. Go back and read the old poets. Renew your own love of the art of poetry; keep working."
His advice to novice readers is equally succinct: "The two important things about poetry are sound and the way metaphor holds things together. I used to be a teacher years ago, and I would begin by reading a poem aloud and then I'd talk about the structure of the poem. Try to see it as a whole and as a unit of sound."
• Elizabeth Lund regularly reviews poetry for the Monitor.
From "Kicking the Leaves" by Donald Hall
This year the poems came back, when the leaves fell.
Kicking the leaves, I heard the leaves tell stories,
remembering, and therefore looking ahead, and building
the house of dying. I looked up into the maples
and found them, the vowels of bright desire.
I thought they had gone forever
while the bird sang I love you, I love you
and shook its black head
from side to side, and its red eye with no lid,
through years of winter, cold
as the taste of chicken wire, the music of cinder block.
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