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lucasmiller's review against another edition
4.0
Donald Hall passed away two days ago at age 89. I bought this book for two dollars at a used books store years ago. It's a little inside baseball. I can't scan. I don't know my parts of speech or rules of grammar enough to hang with many of the essays, but this was a pleasure to read. A pleasure most often because Hall is insistent on the pleasure of poetry being its highest standard.
He was an old, grumpy dude. Egotistical and well aware of it, he wallowed in and also rose above his station when he wrote about his life's work. Rather it be poetry, reading, writing about poetry, or calling contemporary poets on their bullshit.
I've also owned a copy of Hall's too long selected poems, White Apples and a Taste of Stone, for years, and dip into every once in a while. I hope this leads me to a deeper engagement and reading more poems from it aloud. Perhaps to my beautiful wife, my infant daughter, the dog, or just to myself in the den.
He was an old, grumpy dude. Egotistical and well aware of it, he wallowed in and also rose above his station when he wrote about his life's work. Rather it be poetry, reading, writing about poetry, or calling contemporary poets on their bullshit.
I've also owned a copy of Hall's too long selected poems, White Apples and a Taste of Stone, for years, and dip into every once in a while. I hope this leads me to a deeper engagement and reading more poems from it aloud. Perhaps to my beautiful wife, my infant daughter, the dog, or just to myself in the den.
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