In 1952, I recited aloud for the first time, booming in Oxford's Sheldonian Theatre from a bad poem that had won a prize. Football is brothers beating each other up in the backyard.” -- Donald Hall, “For most baseball fans, maybe oldest is always best. I've always loved it. By the twenty-first century, London's best restaurants are as good as Paris's, but not in the 1950s. And every important thing in my life had found itself into poems.” -- Donald Hall, “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” -- Donald Hall, “To grow old is to lose everything. I've a notion that a poem comes from absolutely everything that every happened to you. Get done what you can. “Fathers Playing Catch with Sons: Essays on Sport (Mostly Baseball)”, p.53, North Point Press, Donald Hall (2007). In the twenties, it was Vachel Lindsay, who sometimes dropped to his knees in the middle of a poem. When I was young, there were virtually no poetry readings. Then Robert Frost took over, and made his living largely on the road. 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. We approached Athens from the north in early twilight, climbing a hill. Aging, everybody knows it. Poetry is what I've done my whole life. ", Follow AzQuotes on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. If the poet doesn't wish to revise, let the poet abandon poetry and take up stamp-collecting or real estate.”, “Today when I begin writing I’m aware: something that I don’t understand drives this engine.”, “But Blake's voices returned to dictate revisions.”, “Baseball is fathers and sons. Many years, I would publish four books - an anthology, a book of criticism, a new book of poems, a book of essays. Mere literary talent is common; what is rare is endurance, the continuing desire to work hard at writing. However alert we are, antiquity remains an unknown, unanticipated galaxy. If the poet doesn't wish to revise, let the poet abandon poetry and take up stamp-collecting or real estate. Virtually every beginning poet hurts himself by an addiction to adjectives. And every important thing in my life had found itself into poems. I've a notion that a poem comes from absolutely everything that every happened to you.”. In 1975, I quit my tenure, and we moved from Ann Arbor to New Hampshire. 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. Get done what you can.”, “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.”, “Some of us are darkness lovers. Poetry offers works of art that are beautiful, like paintings, which are my second favorite work of the art, but there are also works of art that embody emotion and that are kind of school for feeling. I say that you read poems not with your eyes and not with your ears, but with your mouth. Adjectives tend to be useless. “The Old Life”, p.92, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Donald Hall (2017). and each summer I largely failed. Then they stay dead.” -- Donald Hall, “I don't know where a poem comes from until after I've lived with it a long time. Even famous poets such as Marianne Moore and William Carlos Williams were rarely asked to read their poems. I was a tightwad. I really feel better about aging at the age of 86 than I did at 70. Even when we are young, we glimpse it sometimes, and nod our heads when a grandfather dies. I preferred the culture, the landscape, the relative solitude. Improve yourself, find your inspiration, share with friends, Donald Hall (1997). Aging, everybody knows it. . Not me. Prose is not so dependent on sound. “Breakfast Served Any Time All Day: Essays on Poetry New and Selected”, p.155, University of Michigan Press, We learned how to love each other by loving together, There is a mistake in the text of this quote. It was daunting to pay for groceries and the mortgage by freelance writing - but it worked, and I loved doing it. If the poet wants to be a poet, the poet must force the poet to revise. I no longer cook for myself but microwave widower food, mostly Stouffer's. Even when we are young, we glimpse it sometimes, and nod our heads when a grandfather dies. "Poetry is what I've done my whole life. 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. Everything important always begins from something trivial. Today when I begin writing I’m aware: something that I don’t understand drives this engine. Donald Hall Anything Times Over Publish There's a great deal of stripping away; in early drafts, I may say the same thing two or three times, and each may be appropriate, but I try to pick the best and improve it. Each season, my balance gets worse, and sometimes I fall. When we reached its peak, we … “Poetry is what I've done my whole life. Donald Hall. 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. Each winter I dreamed crops, dreamed marvels of canning . I don't look forward to dying one little bit. I was publishing all the time when I was in my 20s, and some of those poems I still like. It takes me a long time, but I love doing it, and I have to do it every day, or I feel slack. For noon dinners, we might eat three days of fricasseed chicken from a setting hen that had boiled twelve hours. Some of us are darkness lovers. And there were a few after 60, and in my 70s, that I like. You know how, when you fly from coast to coast on a really clear day, looking down from many miles up, you can see the little baseball diamonds everywhere? We love baseball because it seizes and retains the past, like the snowy village inside a glass paperweight.”, “If work is no antidote to death, nor a denial of it, death is a powerful stimulus to work. I love to do it. They teach how to feel, and they do this by the means of their beauty of language. Then we row for years on the midsummer pond, ignorant and content.”, “Mere literary talent is common; what is rare is endurance, the continuing desire to work hard at writing.”, “If the poet wants to be a poet, the poet must force the poet to revise. 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. Even when we are young, we glimpse it sometimes, and nod our heads when a grandfather dies. Inside our warmth we fold ourselves, partly tuber, partly bear, in the dark and its cold - around us, outside us, safely away from us. Maybe little more.”, “You think that their dying is the worst thing that could happen.

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