I think that I have now read everything that he has written.
Poem: "The judge was decent, but..." by Donald Hall, from The Old Life. © Houghton Mifflin Company, 1996. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)
The judge was decent, but...
The judge was decent, but
judge's chambers were judge's chambers,
yellow and municipal
in downtown Ann Arbor. My kids
were dear and anxious.
Jane's brother and sister-in-law, mother,
and father stood up
with us for the rapid legality
we followed with lobster
and champagne at the Gandy Dancer.
Depressed the next
morning, I knew it was a mistake. I was
wrong. We remarried
five years later in New Hampshire, joyful
in a wooden church,
a Saturday afternoon in April,
only Jack Jensen our
friend and minister with us, saying
the prayer book's words
among lilies and wine in holy shadow.
*
It didn't matter that
I had toasted the Queen at Oxford
while Jane crayoned
into her Coronation Coloring Book.
Married in the spring,
we flew to London in September, ate
pub lunches, visited
friends in Cambridge, and found a Maltese
restaurant in Kensington.
We learned how to love each other
by loving together
good things wholly outside each other.
We took the advice of my
dear depressed and heartsick Aunt Liz,
who wrote us at our flat
in Bloomsbury: "Have fun while you can."
Literary and Historical Notes:
It's the birthday of the poet Donald Hall, (books by this author) born in New Haven, Connecticut (1928) who spent summers on his grandfather's farm in New Hampshire, listening to his grandfather recite poems like "Casey at the Bat" as he milked his Holsteins. Hall moved back to that farm in 1975 with his wife, Jane Kenyon, and they lived there for 20 years until her death from leukemia. His book Without (1998) is about taking care of his wife, and the second part about living without her.
His collection White Apples and the Taste of Stone: Selected Poems 1946–2006 came out last year.
Donald Hall said, "I try every day to write great poetry — as I tried when I was 14. ... What else is there to do?"
Poem: "The judge was decent, but..." by Donald Hall, from The Old Life. © Houghton Mifflin Company, 1996. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)
The judge was decent, but...
The judge was decent, but
judge's chambers were judge's chambers,
yellow and municipal
in downtown Ann Arbor. My kids
were dear and anxious.
Jane's brother and sister-in-law, mother,
and father stood up
with us for the rapid legality
we followed with lobster
and champagne at the Gandy Dancer.
Depressed the next
morning, I knew it was a mistake. I was
wrong. We remarried
five years later in New Hampshire, joyful
in a wooden church,
a Saturday afternoon in April,
only Jack Jensen our
friend and minister with us, saying
the prayer book's words
among lilies and wine in holy shadow.
*
It didn't matter that
I had toasted the Queen at Oxford
while Jane crayoned
into her Coronation Coloring Book.
Married in the spring,
we flew to London in September, ate
pub lunches, visited
friends in Cambridge, and found a Maltese
restaurant in Kensington.
We learned how to love each other
by loving together
good things wholly outside each other.
We took the advice of my
dear depressed and heartsick Aunt Liz,
who wrote us at our flat
in Bloomsbury: "Have fun while you can."
Literary and Historical Notes:
It's the birthday of the poet Donald Hall, (books by this author) born in New Haven, Connecticut (1928) who spent summers on his grandfather's farm in New Hampshire, listening to his grandfather recite poems like "Casey at the Bat" as he milked his Holsteins. Hall moved back to that farm in 1975 with his wife, Jane Kenyon, and they lived there for 20 years until her death from leukemia. His book Without (1998) is about taking care of his wife, and the second part about living without her.
His collection White Apples and the Taste of Stone: Selected Poems 1946–2006 came out last year.
Donald Hall said, "I try every day to write great poetry — as I tried when I was 14. ... What else is there to do?"
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