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 paper terrible
Of course newspaper sportswriting is mostly terrible - and of course it is usually the best writing in the paper.
writing today engines
Today when I begin writing I’m aware: something that I don’t understand drives this engine.
writing sleep bird
I want to sleep like the birds then wake to write you again without hope that you read me.
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.
writing goal reason
I see no reason to spend your life writing poems unless your goal is to write great poems.
writing two goal
To desire to write poems that endure-we undertake such a goal certain of two things: that in all likelihood we will fail, and if we succeed we will never know it
writing light hands
Work is style, and there is style without thought; not in theory, only in fact. When I take a sentence in my hand, raise it to the light, rub my hand across it, disjoin it, put it back together again with a comma added, raising the pitch in the front part; when I rub the grain of it, comb the fur of it, re-assemble the bones of it, I am making something that carries with it the sound of a voice, the firmness of a hand. Maybe little more.
hard-work writing desire
Mere literary talent is common; what is rare is endurance, the continuing desire to work hard at writing.
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.