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Overview
Throughout his writing life Donald Hall has garnered numerous accolades and honors, culminating in 2006 with his appointment as poet laureate of the United States. White Apples and the Taste of Stone collects more than two hundred poems from across sixty years of Hall’s celebrated career, and includes poems published in The New Yorker, the American Poetry Review, and the New York Times.
Those who have come to love Donald Hall's poetry will welcome this vital and important addition to his body of work. For the uninitiated it is a spectacular introduction to this critically acclaimed and admired poet.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780547348780 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt |
| Publication date: | 03/19/2021 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 452 |
| Sales rank: | 462,321 |
| File size: | 4 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
LOVE IS LIKE SOUNDS
Late snow fell this early morning of spring.
At dawn I rose from bed, restless, and looked Out of my window, to wonder if there the snow Fell outside your bedroom, and you watching.
I played my game of solitaire. The cards Came out the same the third time through the deck.
The game was stuck. I threw the cards together, And watched the snow that could not do but fall.
Love is like sounds, whose last reverberations Hang on the leaves of strange trees, on mountains As distant as the curving of the earth, Where the snow hangs still in the middle of the air.
EXILE
Each of us waking to the window’s light Has found the curtains changed, our pictures gone; Our furniture has vanished in the night And left us to an unfamiliar dawn; Even the contours of the room are strange And everything is change.
Waking, our minds construct of memory What figure stretched beside us, or what voice Shouted to pull us from our luxury — And all the mornings leaning to our choice.
To put away — both child and murderer — The toys we played with just a month ago, That wisdom come, and make our progress sure, Began our exile with our lust to grow.
(Remembering a train I tore apart Because it knew my heart.) We move to move, and this perversity Betrays us into loving only loss.
We seek betrayal. When we cross the sea, It is the distance from our past we cross.
Not only from the intellectual child Time has removed us, but unyieldingly Cuts down the groves in which our Indians fi led And where the black of pines was mystery.
(I walked the streets of where I lived and grew, And all the streets were new.) The room of love is always rearranged.
Someone has torn the corner of a chair So that the past we call upon has changed, The scene deprived by an intruding tear.
Exiled by death from people we have known, We are reduced again by years, and try To call them back and clothe the barren bone, Not to admit that people ever die.
(A boy who talked and read and grew with me Fell from a maple tree.) But we are still alone, who love the dead, And always miss their action’s character, Caught in the cage of living, visited By no faint ghosts, by no gray men that were.
In years, and in the numbering of space, Moving away from what we grew to know, We stray like paper blown from place to place, Impelled by every element to go.
(I think of haying on an August day, Forking the stacks of hay.) We can remember trees and attitudes That foreign landscapes do not imitate; They grow distinct within the interludes Of memory beneath a stranger state.
The favorite toy was banished, and our act Was banishment of the self; then growing, we Betrayed the girls we loved, for our love lacked Self-knowledge of its real perversity.
(I loved her, but I told her I did not, And grew, and then forgot.) It was mechanical, and in our age, That cruelty should be our way of speech; Our movement is a single pilgrimage, Never returning; action does not teach.
In isolation from our present love We make her up, consulting memory, Imagining to watch her image move On daily avenues across a sea.
(All day I saw her daydreamed figure stand Out of the reach of hand.) Each door and window is a spectral frame In which her shape is for the moment found; Each lucky scrap of paper bears her name, And half-heard phrases imitate its sound.
Imagining, by exile kept from fact, We build of distance mental rock and tree, And make of memory creative act, Persons and worlds no waking eye can see.
(From lacking her, I built her new again, And loved the image then.) The manufactured country is so green The eyes of sleep are blinded by its shine; We spend our lust in that imagined scene But never wake to cross its borderline.
No man can knock his human fist upon The door built by his mind, or hear the voice He meditated come again if gone; We live outside the country of our choice.
(I wanted X. When X moved in with me, I could not wait to flee.) Our humanness betrays us to the cage Within whose limits each is free to walk, But where no one can hear our prayers or rage And none of us can break the walls to talk.
Exiled by years, by death no dream conceals, By worlds that must remain unvisited, And by the wounds that growing never heals, We are as solitary as the dead, Wanting to king it in that perfect land We make and understand.
And in this world whose pattern is unmade, Phases of splintered light and shapeless sand, We shatter through our motions and evade Whatever hand might reach and touch our hand.
Newdigate Prize, Oxford, 1953
WE’VE COME TO EXPECT
We’ve come to expect earthquakees, fires, hurricanes, and tidal waves from our whitecoated brothers whose laboratories shed radiation on land and landscape,
disabling cities. Foresighted citizens outfit granite arks in Idaho’s brown hills, stocked against flood, famine, pestilence, warrrrr, and hunger of neighbors,
with bulgur, freeze-dried Stroganoff, and Uzis.
Let’s remember: Our great-grandfathers holed up in mountains with pistols and pemmican, their manhood sufficient,
should they avoid peritonitis and gangrene, to perform the mechanic alchemy which liquefied landscape, dirt to nuggets, and sluiced a state golden.
Let’s remember not only the local wars over claims but a late conflict of siblings in aristocracy and the stock market, sharing destruction.
Or recollect the brothers who stayed back east laboring in the shoe factory, or their bosses who summered hunting in Scotland and reside forever
in the Protestant Cemetery at Rome among cats, the pyramid of Cestius, and Keats’s grave. What use are those forefathers to our condition?
We want comfort: Shall we consult Jefferson?
Alas, he’s busy conducting a call-in show for Republican-Democrats. Franklin?
He is occupied
obliterating SIN from Webster’s project.
If we approach doddering George Washington, he only smiles at us in his foolishness.
Shall we call upon
Abraham Lincoln for succor? No: The Great Emancipator succumbs to Grant’s whiskey.
As we approach the present, passing double Roosevelts, we do
not help ourselves — not with old Eisenhower cursing at caddies; not with Nixon cursing.
But if we return past Jonathan Edwards, past Cotton Mather,
to the Israelites of the Mayfl ower — who make covenant with Jehovah’s promised wilderness and the manna of Indian corn, who stay secure
in Adam’s fall and the broken promises of the remnant — we discover ancestors appropriate to our lapsarian state: Their rage sustains us
THE PAINTED BED
“Even when I danced erect by the Nile’s garden I constructed Necropolis.
“Ten million fellaheen cells of my body floated stones to establish a white museum.” Grisly, foul, and terrific is the speech of bones, thighs and arms slackened into desiccated sacs of flesh hanging from an armature where muscle was, and fat.
“I lie on the painted bed diminishing, concentrated on the journey I undertake to repose without pain in the palace of darkness, my body beside your body.”
SECRETS
You climbed Hawk’s Crag, a cellphone in your baggy shorts, and gazed into the leafing trees and famous blue water.
You telephoned, in love with the skin of the world. I heard you puff as you started to climb down, still talking, switching your phone from hand to hand as the stone holds required.
You sang show tunes sitting above me, clicking your fingers, swaying your shadowy torso. We attended to each other in a sensuous dazzle as global as suffering until gradual gathering spilled like water over the stone dam and we soared level across the long-lived lake.
But how can one flesh and consciousness adhere to another, knowing that every adherence ends in separation? I longed for your return, your face lit by a candle, your smile private as a kore’s under an inconstant flame — and dreamt I stared into the fl at and black of water, afraid to drown.
It is half a year since we slept beside each other all night.
I wake hollow as a thighbone with its marrow picked out.
In falling snow, a crow pecks under the empty birdfeeder.
H When the house lights go out in wind and heavy snow, the afternoon already black, I lie frightened in darkness on the unsheeted bed. No one comes to my door.
Old age concludes in making wills and trusts and inventories, in knees that buckle going downstairs. Wretched in airless solitude, I want to call you, but if you hear my voice you will unplug your telephone and lie awake until morning.
I remember you striding toward me, hands in jean pockets, each step decisive, smiling as if you knew that the cool air kept a secret, but might be cajoled into revealing it.
Copyright © 2006 by Donald Hall. Reprinted with permission by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Table of Contents
Contents
1. Early Poems Old Home Day · 3 Love Is Like Sounds · 3 Wedding Party · 3 Exile · 4 Exile (1968) · 7 Elegy for Wesley Wells · 8 My Son My Executioner · 10 The Sleeping Giant · 11 Je Suis une Table · 11 Dancers · 12 By the Exeter River · 13 T.R. · 14 The Hole · 14 Religious Articles · 15 The Foundations of American Industry · 16 Cops and Robbers · 17 Sestina · 18 Waiting on the Corners · 19 “Marat’s Death” · 20 “The Kiss” · 21 “Between the Clock and the Bed” · 22 Christ Church Meadows, Oxford · 22 Christmas Eve in Whitneyville · 23
2. The Musk Ox The Long River · 29 The Snow · 29 The Farm · 31 The Moon · 32 The Child · 33 The Poem · 34 Wells · 34 An Airstrip in England, 1960 · 35 New Hampshire · 35 Self-Portrait as a Bear · 36 Orange Knee Socks · 36 Sleeping · 37 “King and Queen” · 38 “Reclining Figure” · 38 Digging · 39 The Pilot of 1918 · 40 Letter to an English Poet · 40 Stump · 42 In the Kitchen of the Old House · 45 The Days · 46 Swan · 47 The Man in the Dead Machine · 49
3. I Am the Fox The Alligator Bride · 53 Sew · 54 The Coal Fire · 55 The Blue Wing · 55 Woolworth’s · 56 The Repeated Shapes · 57 Crewcuts · 58 Tall Women · 59 The Table · 60 Mount Kearsarge · 61 The Young Watch Us · 62 Gold · 62 Waters · 63 Nose · 64 Stones · 64 The Dump · 65 The High Pasture · 65 The Green Shelf · 66 Adultery at Forty · 67 To a Waterfowl · 67 Fete · 68 Eleanor’s Letters · 69 The Raisin · 70 The Town of Hill · 71 White Apples · 72
4. Root Cellar Maple Syrup · 75 The Toy Bone · 77 O Cheese · 78 Kicking the Leaves · 79 Eating the Pig · 82 Wolf Knife · 86 On Reaching the Age of Two Hundred · 89 The Flies · 90 Ox Cart Man · 94 Stone Walls · 95 Old Roses · 99 Traffic · 100
5. Lady Ghost The Black-Faced Sheep · 105 Names of Horses · 107 Great Day in the Cows’ House · 109 The Henyard Round · 112 New Animals · 114 Scenic View · 115 Old Timers’ Day · 115 The Baseball Players · 116 Granite and Grass · 117 A Sister on the Tracks · 118 A Sister by the Pond · 120 The Day I Was Older · 124 For an Exchange of Rings · 125 The Impossible Marriage · 126 Mr. Wakeville on Interstate 90 · 127 My Friend Felix · 128 Merle Bascom’s .22 · 129 Cider 5? a Glass · 131 Oliver at Thirteen · 136 Edward’s Anecdote · 137
6. The One Day Shrubs Burnt Away · 143 Four Classic Texts · 156 To Build a House · 169
7. The Height and House of Desire Tubes · 181 Moon Clock · 183 Carol · 183 Persistence of 1937 · 184 Six Naps in One Day · 184 The Coffee Cup · 185 This Poem · 186 Praise for Death · 189 Speeches · 196 The Night of the Day · 200 Another Elegy · 208
8. Baseball The First Inning · 217 The Second Inning · 219 The Third Inning · 222 The Fourth Inning · 224 The Fifth Inning · 227 The Sixth Inning · 230 The Seventh Inning · 232 The Eighth Inning · 235 The Ninth Inning · 237
9. The Museum of Clear Ideas Decius — Whose Guileful · 243 We’ve Come to Expect · 244 Let Engine Cowling · 246 Winter’s Asperity Mollifi es · 247 Who’s This Fellow · 249 I’m Not Up to It · 249 Let Many Bad Poets · 250 In the Name Of · 252 Mount Kearsarge Shines · 252 Camilla, Never Ask · 253 The Times Are Propitious · 254 Drusilla Informs · 256 Ship of State, Hightide · 257 When the Young Husband · 258 Old Woman Whom I · 260 When the Fine Days · 261 When I Was Young · 262 Flaccus, Drive Up · 263 Let Us Meditate the Virtue · 263 We Explore Grief’s · 264 I Suppose You’ve Noticed · 265 Sabina — Who Explored · 266 Go Write a Poem · 267 Nunc Est Bibendum · 268 I, Too, Dislike · 269
10. Extra Innings The Tenth Inning · 273 The Eleventh Inning · 276 The Twelfth Inning · 280 The Thirteenth Inning · 284
11. The Old Life Spring Glen Grammar School · 295 The Hard Man · 297 Venetian Nights · 298 Blue · 299 My Aunt Liz · 299 Screenplay · 300 The Profession · 301 Edit · 302 The Girlfriend · 303 The Giant Broom · 303 Mr. Eliot · 304 Le Jazz · 305 Just Married · 306 Dread · 307 The Fragments · 307 Fame · 308 Forty Years · 309 What Counts · 310 Moon Shot · 311 7? · 312 Elbows · 312 The Wedding Couple · 313 Rain · 314 Beans and Franks · 314 Revisions · 315 Routine · 316
12. ALL Her Long Illness · 319 Barber · 331 The Porcelain Couple · 332 The Ship Pounding · 333 Folding Chair · 334 Her Intent · 335 Without · 335 After Life · 337 Retriever · 341 The Painted Bed · 342
13. Letters Without Addresses Letter with No Address · 345 Midsummer Lettter · 348 Letter in Autumn · 352 Letter at Christmas · 355 Letter in the New Year · 359 Midwinter Letter · 363 Letter after a Year · 366
14. Throwing Away Weeds and Peonies · 373 After Homer · 374 Her Garden · 374 Summer Kitchen · 375 Wool Squares · 375 Pond Afternoons · 376 Hours Hours · 377 The Wish · 377 Another Christmas · 378 Sweater · 379 Distressed Haiku · 380 Throwing the Things Away · 381 The Perfect Lifffffe · 383 Deathwork · 384 Ardor · 385 Kill the Day · 386 Razor · 391 Conversation’s Afterplay · 392 Charity and Dominion · 393 Sun · 394 Villanelle · 394 Love Poem · 395 Affirmation · 395
15. Recent Poems Secrets · 399 The Angels · 400 The Master · 401 Surveyor and Surface · 401 North South · 402 The Mysteries · 404 Olives · 405 After Horace · 406 Tea · 407 Safe Sex · 407 Tennis Ball · 408 1943 · 409 Usage · 409 White Clapboard · 410 Witness’s House · 410 Gospel · 412 We Bring Democracy to the Fish · 413 Fishing for Cats, 1944 · 413 The Hunkering · 414
Note · 416 Index of Titles and First Lines · 417