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
powerful done denial
If work is no antidote to death, nor a denial of it, death is a powerful stimulus to work. Get done what you can.
years ignorant grandfather
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.
dark opposites ideas
Some of us are darkness lovers. We do not dislike the early and late daylight of June, but we cherish the increasing dark of November, which we wrap around ourselves in the prosperous warmth of wood stove, oil and electric blanket. Inside our warmth we fold ourselves, partly tuber, partly bear, in the dark and its cold - around us, outside us, safely away from us. We tuck ourselves up in the comfort of cold's opposite, warming ourslves by thought of the cold, lighting ourselves by darkness's idea.
eye literature world
Great literature, if we read it well, opens us up to the world and makes us more sensitive to it, as if we acquired eyes that could see through things and ears that could hear smaller sounds.
hard-work writing desire
Mere literary talent is common; what is rare is endurance, the continuing desire to work hard at writing.
marriage together how-to-love
We learned how to love each other by loving together good things wholly outside each other.
life married wonderful
It is about her death, but it is also about our life together, we were married 23 wonderful years,
fool fools-and-foolishness three
I was a fool three years ago. One is always a fool three years ago.
finished
I think I'm probably finished writing about it now,
came year
I came here every year when I was kid,