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
writing goal trying
If our goal is to write poetry, the only way we are likely to be any good is to try to be as great as the best.
drives fear
Fear is what drives me to your demise.
finished
I think I'm probably finished writing about it now,
among built owned pew structure
My great-great-grandparents owned the back pew and they were among those who built the structure back in the 1800s,
months three aviation
Can build plane... Delivery about three months.
horse sea glasses
Generation on generation, your neck rubbed the windowsill of the stall, smoothing the wood as the sea smooths glass.
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.
grief loss wish
I wish you were that birch rising from the clump behind you, and I the gray oak alongside.
baseball past glasses
For most baseball fans, maybe oldest is always best. We love baseball because it seizes and retains the past, like the snowy village inside a glass paperweight.
important done found
Poetry is what I've done my whole life. And every important thing in my life had found itself into poems.
art philosophy history
Less is more, in prose as in architecture.
kindness eye bullets
The greatest kindness would put a bullet in his bright eye.
long notion happened
I don't know where a poem comes from until after I've lived with it a long time. I've a notion that a poem comes from absolutely everything that every happened to you.
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.