The Back Chamber - Hardcover

Hall, Donald

 
9780547645858: The Back Chamber
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0547645856 ISBN 13: 9780547645858
Verlag: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011

Inhaltsangabe

The first full-length volume of poems in a decade by the former poet laureate of the United States

In The Back Chamber, Donald Hall illuminates the evocative, iconic objects of deep memory—a cowbell, a white stone perfectly round, a three-legged milking stool—that serve to foreground the rich meditations on time and mortality that run through his remarkable new collection. While Hall’s devoted readers will recognize many of his long-standing preoccupations—baseball, the family farm, love, sex, and friendship—what will strike them as new is the fierce, pitiless poignancy he reveals as his own life’s end comes into view. The Back Chamber is far from being death-haunted, but rather is lively, irreverent, erotic, hilarious, ironic, and sly—full of the life-affirming energy that has made Donald Hall one of America’s most popular and enduring poets.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

DONALD HALL (1928-2018) served as poet laureate of the United States from 2006 to 2007. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a recipient of the National Medal of the Arts, awarded by the president.

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Praise for the poetry of Donald Hall

“His reliance on simple, concrete diction and the no-nonsense sequence of the declarative sentence gives his poems steadiness and imbues them with a tone of sincere authority . . . The mood of loss than attends the passing of generations saturates this collection.”—Billy Collins, Washington Post Book World

“Hall’s ability to unflinchingly revisit memories of personal suffering with his full heart and intelligence, and to find for that suffering a meaningful expression, is the hard-won achievement of a lifetime.”—David Yezzi, Wall Street Journal

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

The Things

When I walk in my house I see pictures,
bought long ago, framed and hanging
—de Kooning, Arp, Laurencin, Henry Moore—
that I’ve cherished and stared at for years,
yet my eyes keep returning to the masters
of the trivial—a white stone perfectly round,
tiny lead models of baseball players, a cowbell,
a broken great-grandmother’s rocker,
a dead dog’s toy—valueless, unforgettable
detritus that my children will throw away
as I did my mother’s souvenirs of trips
with my dead father, Kodaks of kittens,
and bundles of cards from her mother Kate.


Love’s Progress

When love empties itself out,
it fills our bodies full.

For an hour we lie twining
pulse and skin together

like nurslings who sigh
and doze, dreamy with milk.


Ruins

Snow rises as high as my windows. Inside by the fire
my chair is warm, and I remain compounded of cold.

It is unthinkable that we will not touch each other again.

As the barn’s bats swoop, vastation folds its wings
over my chest to enclose my rapid, impetuous heart.

It is ruinous that we will not touch each other again.

Ten miles away, snow falls on your clapboard house.
You play with your children in frozen meadows of snow.

 

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Verlag
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Erscheinungsdatum
2011
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0547645856
ISBN 13 
9780547645858
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
96
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