The Iowa Review
Volume 2
Issue 1 Winter
1971
Donald Hall's Poetry
Ralph J. Mills Jr.
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Mills, Ralph J. Jr.. "Donald Hall's Poetry." The Iowa Review 2.1 (1971): 82-123. Web.
Available at: http://ir.uiowa.edu/iowareview/vol2/iss1/31
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Article 31
Donald Hall's Poetry
J. Mills,
Ralph
to
"I wake
Jr.
and
sleep,
take my
slow"
waking
?Theodore
les yeux
"Je ferme
voir"
mieux
simplement/pour
Roethke
Soupault
?Philippe
recent appearance of The Alligator Bride; a volume of new and selected
in Donald Hall's
poems, provides a good occasion for looking at the development
writing, where his work began and the important alterations it has subsequently
one of the most inter
undergone. Of the poetic generation of the 1950's Hall is
an
and
As
influential
and
sometime critic, he
editor, anthologist,
esting
figures.
has helped to shape a sense of current poetic history, its multiple
ideas and
The
and
aims,
has
he
an
been
and opposed established
his attitudes more clearly
anthology Contemporary
the gradual downfall of
ican poetry from "1925
artist
modern
as
has
allowed
create
a
a
were
if restlessness
future.
"
has
He
open
of
proponent
in
pluralism
poetry
contemporary
critical theories and dogmas. Nowhere does he declare
and succinctly than in the admirable introduction to his
American Poetry
(1962). There he starts by noting
the New Criticism as the "orthodoxy" dominating Amer
to 1955," and then rightly observes that "typically the
said
be
to
nothing
conviction
He
has
acted
consideration.
his
beyond
to
own
in order
his
has
past
destroyed
to the
like the
vagrant,
policeman
'Keep
and
to himself,
moving.'
from the general
suitable to Hall's
For present purposes I should like to shift attention
of this statement and regard it instead as perfectly
applicability
own
career
as a
in
detects
the
some crucial
order
to
poet.
he
Indeed,
lies behind
juncture radically
a
create
That
future."
his
of
of many
work
book,
shows
however,
of?in
Eliot's
criticism
his
own
and
how
he
closely
words?"symmetry,
and
the
thought
it, charted
a
gestures,
in Hall's
past
and
writing,
contemporaries,
decisive
first two collections, Exiles and Marriages
though the latter reveals tangible growth
ments
own
in his
has,
and feeling which
of imagination
case
in the
certainly
life
the kind of course he
course
that
demands
at
the destruction
of a "past in
becomes
evident
quite
in his
(1958),
(1955) and The Dark Houses
and the desire for change. The initial
to
adhered
intellect,
practice
of
the
then
require
prevailing
derived
from
and wit"
irony,
In a re
various
critics.
modern
cent unpublished
lecture, The Inward Muse, Hall remarks that he "grew up in
the thick of the new critcism" and as he worked on his early poems "could some
times hear the voice of Mr. Ransom"
(whom he did not know) reminding him
82
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to
be
other
Doubtless,
similar
In
experiences.
tablishment
from
every
"it
Hall's
of
poets
later
the
that
adds
first with
began,
came
rejections
he
ironic;
appropriately
voice."*
ten
took
to
rid of
that
years
get
or
same
have
known
the
generation
1950's,
break
the
however,
the arrival of Ginsberg
As
quarter.
it appears
with
and
es
critical
soon
but
movement
this
now,
the
the Beats,
has
de
livered poetry back into the hands of poets.
Hall's
since
pecially
most
can
The
revised?in
usually
the
reader
to
meaningful
dismiss
without
Lone
Fig
"Six
ine,"
the
Poets
as Hall
in
in Search
of
a
retains
wisely
are not
them
and
"Carol,"
Lawyer,"
slick,
"Cops
Revisited,"
the
later re
which
one
to five
hundred
various
from
and
others.
reduced
lines,
appears,
only
on
are
view
and
with
mal
all
here,
skills,
irony,
dexterity,
intelligence
along
can
one
is
the best
these
that
echoes
but
for
casional
of mentors,
say
poems
exhibit a gift for knowledgeable,
very
slight.
More
have
emerged
found,
New
time
truly
Hampshire,
he was
a
small
material
for
as well
instructive,
The
boy.
a
quite
as
annual
few
poems
to read
pleasurable,
the
visits,
other
in
his
the
oc
they
first
fine
touch
correspondingly,
of these
Some
his
pro
of
poems
from
the
his
for
love
of life they knew
and
after.
memoirs
of
book
prose
are
farm
grandparents'
farm
labors,
and
must
which
poems
to the slowly dying way
attachment
and complex
For
today they seem dated
versifying;
can
several
be mustered
for
support
sources
in the
from
and,
poet
deeper
in the reader.
sensitive
chords
of
feeling
summers
on his
Hall
where
spent
grandparents
provide
polished
a
Tanger
including
at Oxford),
Prize
(winner of the Newdigate
"The
of
"Syllables
"Nefas
Robbers,"
"Lycanthropy
as
such
pieces
es
experience
one
But
work.
"Apology,"
and
these
interest,
of
in his
witty
Work,"
few?and
of
areas
the
persisting
the
does,
a
only
devoid
wholly
some
of
themes
"Conduct
Oddities,"
"Exile"
long poem
glimpse
and
certain
poet
"Some
Tree,"
he
Bride,
Alligator
can
regret,
"A Novelist,"
Ranger,"
Small
of which
poems,
early
It
is
also
farm
these
as
experiences, published in 1961
String Too Short To Be Saved; from this book
the background and many of the details in a poem such as the moving "Elegy
Wells"
for Wesley
of
Day"?both
shire
pieces
become
clear.
revised?are
the
(his
grandfather)
and
shortened
them
the
and
ones
only
Hall
has
That
best
In
salvaged.
of
the
poem
the
first
and
"Old
New
early
version
the
Home
Hamp
"Elegy"
in its present form it is still
lost something of its force through lengthiness;
and
the
his
the
but
dead
farmer,
past,
history of the region he inhabited
long,
more
become
have
home
exile
country
which
not
sharpens
only
his
tance,
finally confirming
* I am
indebted
greatly
materials,
and
broadcast
book.
83
The
Yellow
Criticism
and
intimately
Room
increases
vision
the
of
the
sense
of
for
Love
Hall
permitting
Poems.
for
allowing
me
to
but
loss
contours
of
a
Wells'
opening
to use
me
see
offers
Wesley
it. The
soon
realize
after
the
of
perspective
life and
inheri
effectively
unpublished
version
manuscript
the
from his
and his distance
from England;
his solidarity with
to Mr.
We
related.
vitally
is writing
that Hall
poem's beginning
renders
lecture
and
of
new
his
the
and
absence
of
atmosphere
death
deprivation
creates
which
now
has
de
scended upon the farm:
Against the clapboards and the window panes
The loud March whines with rain and heavy wind,
In dark New Hampshire where his widow wakes.
She cannot sleep. The familiar length is gone.
across
I think
Of
I
the
Atlantic
clamorous
the farm lies hard against the foot
To where
underneath
Mountain,
Ragged
Kearsarge.
sea.
his name
the
against
beating
speak
His dogs will whimper
Where
close
spiders
his
through the webby
in a
tools
barn,
gauze
pale
And wait for flies. The nervous woodchuck now
Will waddle plumply through the world of weeds
Eating wild peas as if he owned the land,
And the fat hedgehog rob the apple trees.
next
When
And
October's
harden
frosts
in the
year's
fasten
the
ground
catastrophe,
The farm will lie like driftwood,
The farmer dead, and deep in his carved earth.
to the
this passage, Hall shifts to historical considerations,
Following
richness of this region before the Civil War, which "took off the hired men" who
cultivated the fields, so that in time these lands returned to their original state
"thick with ashy pine." The poem continues by recounting the steadily worsen
ing
fortunes
the
of
inhabitants?those
an
of
image
disturbing
remained?and
who
abandoned
railroad
and
of progress and prosperity.
(A more detailed description
occur
in
Too
Short
To Be Saved. ) :
setting
String
in the
Deep
forest
now,
half-covered
through
evokes
locomotive
the
the
bizarre,
departure
of this engine
and its
up,
The reddened track of an abandoned railroad
Heaved in the frosts, in the roots of the tall pines;
A
stood
locomotive
a
Like
rock,
strange
red
existence
his
grandfather's
durable
picture
the honesty,
of
the
for
man
the
so many
to be
out
Remembering
His
gentleness,
the virtues
his
soft,
needles.
the
retained
stability, and unobtrusive
I number
fallen
routines of the farm that formed
the daily and seasonal
Recalling
years,
poet
in memory,
heroism of that life:
that
consistent
are
dead,
voice,
and most,
The bone that showed
84
as
in each deliberate word.
achieves
one
which
the basis
an
essential,
incorporates
for
The
"in
dark
the
cemetery
New
ing,"
that
New
acute
a
sensitivity
second
guilt.
the
in
part
element
seem
rearranged
images of man
and landscape
dy
and
Houses;
at
least
his
of
version
to
I am
that
of
his
from
The
work.
intimations
by
possessed
England's
far off
carried
body
knowing
Dark
The
acquired
constant
shortened,
people"
grandfather's
collection,
a
"on
vigil
and
"place
wrist/without
my
mortality,
into
develops
In
solitary
that
his
and
the initial stanza blends
Day"
on
his
from
a
keeping
are to
envisaging
the watch
poem
to time
ties
of the early poems
and
isolation,
his
ends
experiences,
accomplished
loss,
he
see
in
Hampshire
most
realizing
cannot
writes
Hall
that
Hampshire";
for burial.
"I
Hall
shows
portion
poem's
closing
crowded
and
shore"
of death,
"Old
Home
in a condition
of
decay:
general
Under
the
lid,
staring
of a mouth,
eyeless,
in the
And
pucker
Gullied hayfields cave together
And crumble in the August drouth.
And from the lengthy, rather tedious original text of "Exile," once a poem of
four pages, Hall has extracted what were three parenthetical
couplets set in the
summaries of
middle of different stanzas to make brief yet highly suggestive
a
stanza designates
valued
Each
dilemmas.
by the poet
relationship
personal
which has now been violated, either through death, through the poet's own be
that influence an individual's life.
trayal, or through the changing circumstances
None of the violations is elaborated in much detail; instead a simplicity of lan
and
guage
tease
final
out
couplet,
a
person
that
the
stimulates
description
the
and
possibilities
it
while
depicts
grows
imagination,
in his
similarities
a
moment
particular
his
from
even
away
to
him
permitting
own
The
experience.
the realization
of
knowledge,
return
roots
that he will
and
reader's
to discover
deepest
to the place of his origins only to find it alien and strange because he has himself
altered, should not be understood merely as a third instance of perplexing loss in the
if we
For
poem.
view
stanzas
three
the
in
we
sequence
a
comprehend
certain
In the first couplet death deprives the poet of a good friend,
kind of movement.
still in his boyhood; in the second, and most complex, he breaks off a relation
a
we are not
ship with
girl while he yet loves her?out of what hidden motives
sure?and
ness,
though
it
of the poem
in
the
these
title
exile
stanza,
denotes
us,
and
visits
he
emphasizes
an
we
unavoidable,
even
exile
Criticism
dismisses
since
vanished
the
his
the
the continuity
poet,
and
the
from
aspect
others,
last
yet
the
couplet
with
life. The
grow
time
and
center
finally,
changed
I believe,
existence:
we
conscious
it at
it has
in each
of
from
early poetry);
thinks
in the poem,
of change
recurrent
ourselves
include
in Hall's
and
birthplace
importance
in
incident
he must
turns up elsewhere
alterations
such experiences,
always
come. Loss, then, creates
slides ambiguously
couplet
85
not
appears of primary
cause
then
remorse,
has
(this experience
events
of grew/new
of
period
obviously
concluding
pletely. What
of
a
suffers
com
is that all
its
rhyme
exile of the
and
mature
death
from
is yet to
impelled forward by the promise of what
the possibility of gain, and so, in this light, the third
between estrangement and potentiality:
and talked and read with me
A boy who played
a
from
Fell
tree.
maple
I loved her, but I told her I did not,
And
and
wept,
I walked
And
I was
where
were
streets
the
forgot.
streets
the
all
then
born
and
grew,
new.
a poem Hall uses to
"Wedding Party,"
begin both Exiles and Mar
a
in
Bride
and
The
shorter,
riages
Alligator
(though
improved form in the latter
takes
volume),
slightly
dominate
not
of
start
very
as we
for
expect,
with
vision
imaginative
might
and
change
the
irrational
temporal
as
especially
version
condensed
new,
the
given
theme
manner,
in the
At
tude.
this
up
fantastic
its
are
abandonment
the
once
to
verisimili
are
which
details,
omi
somewhat
upon
a
in
it
allowed
of
of
order
at
falls
focus
treats
and
elements
total
dictates
the
erosion
nous figures rather than the bridal couple:
The
of
player
pock-marked
accordion
the
and fills his squeeze box in the corner,
Empties
Kin
to the
Kin
to the
man who
tiny
caterer.
These
pours
champagne,
solemn
men,
Amid the sounds of silk and popping
Stand like pillars.
This
odd
group,
conventional
last
and
gaiety
a half
saint
carried
line
female
ruling
from
of
over
the
in
the
by
it turns
bride
The
in a bizarre
stanza,
effigy
as
occasion
outset.
the
corks,
a
out,
appears
to
analogy
procession
religious
mutes
and
after
these
the
or
Virgin
a
through
the
qualifies
men,
in
some
throng
the
other
of wor
:
shippers
And the white bride
Moves
through
the
Certainly,
and
expectations,
as
a
threat
sphere
the
further unnecessary
of
an
normalcy
care
about
less.
as
with
the
of
such
stanza
one
ujton
externals
and
merely
made
the
the
dissipated
concessions
the
the
last
stanza,
the poem's
bride's
of
strangeness
death
In
suitor,"
and
the
atmo
the
curious
to
ordinariness
or
couldn't
situation,
stanza
his
speaker
rejected
twilight"
so
then,
established.
"summer
irreality
removed,
been
identified
to
and
aging,
initial
the
of
have
"friend
of
feeling
time,
end
stanza which
a
a
induces
ideas
indefinite,
yet
This
preceding
intent
reader,
Now,
the
moves.
relic
filler, and finished with
the
by
the
a chaired
relic"
last moment,
storm.
approaching
generated
which
"chaired
implies
vision.
With
though
at
invited
guest
as
crowd
included a middle
original version Hall
added
phrase
importantly?first
climactic
poem's
also?quite
to the
central
unpleasant
the
immediately
the disquieting
details. The accordionist
suddenly as
picks up and magnifies
sumes the gigantic, terrifying proportions of a
or
fate
god
presiding over these
ceremonies;
future
life
memories,
86
and
are
under
envisaged
and, by
his
as if in an hallucination,
the
spell,
as
transformed
already
completed,
implication,
nearing death.
bride's
into
(It is perhaps worth
marriage
a few
noting
and
faded
that
in neither
is
version
to
related
their
ravaging
instrument
the
of
storm
The
mentioned.)
groom
shower
omitted
which
stanza,
no
longer
understood
breaks,
can
thus
be
as the tempest of time
striking the bride and, I believe,
metaphorically
as well,
the
thunder
the
all
Now
lives,
the
directing
while
above
of
rhythms
at once
the
pock-marked
air
of
in
and
her guests
his
accordionist-god,
out
of
lungs:
grows
player
the bride
to a rind
withers
marriage
the
looms
existence,
Immense and terrible beside
Whose
them
of years
And curling photographs in a dry box;
And in the storm that hurls upon the room
Above the crowd he holds his breathing box
That only empties, fills, empties, fills.
In The Dark Houses Hall's work develops along lines similar to those
the better pieces in his first book; there are fewer poems that
distinguishing
seem
and
skill
all
perience
from
poems
passage,
in
Eve
awareness
with
Whitney
which
an
ville,"
draws
that
to
try
Once
thrives.
imagination
and
Marriages,
the missed
Exiles
and
more
and
fancy,
on which
is an
there
opportunities
for his
father,
elegy
ironic
reach
again,
obvious
a
for
the
day; each family is locked in its home as if itwere
Each
car
Each
husband
is
in each
away
put
home
from
roots
concealed
most
concern
the
of
with
In
an
reveals
"Christmas
incisive
on
isolationism
ex
of
superior
time's
death,
existence.
full
poet
class
of middle
pictures
those
as with
social
this
feast
a cell:
garage;
to celebrate,
work,
Has closed his house around him like a cage,
And wedged the tree until the tree stood straight.
Hall
to
proceeds
his
summarize
father's
business
how
career,
success
after
he
could afford trips to Europe where, unable to forget work, he "took the time to
think how yearly gains,/Profit and volume made the business grow." Now, dying
at
he
fifty-two,
early
his comment,
recalled
has
by
acquired
the poet,
but
money
seen
has
the
discloses
little
and
regret
of
life
or
ambivalence
the world;
he
feels
toward the close of his fatal illness :
"The
"Or
things
thought
you
you
to miss,"
had
had
to,
take
you
your
said
last week,
breath
away."
You propped yourself on pillows, where your cheek
Was hollow, stubbled lightly with new gray.
on this devotion
Reflecting
the
enclosure;
mode
for
This
87
which
to acquisitiveness,
resembled
a
Hall
"cage"
comes again
becomes
of living that is itself a form of imprisonment.
liberation
Without
house
and
to the image of
synonymous
The
poet
with
a
looks elsewhere
reward:
love is jail; another sets us free.
anger but
Criticism
in a mood
of determination,
Hall
leaves his
father buried
the
among
people
it is a moment
of
existence.
The
the
pursue
and
departure
links
darkness
of
imagery
lie in its cemetery:
dead who
same
still
who
farewell
ends
the
has
for the poet
rejected;
a different,
more
abundant
inhabitants
sleeping
with
all of them are denied
The
lights go out and it is Christmas Day.
The
stones
is black
the grass
of
town's
in different ways
are white,
he
in search
and
the
life:
deep;
I will go back and leave you here to stay,
While the dark houses harden into sleep.
Certain
other
in
poems
in New
pression
ironic
sharp,
Hampshire,
of wasted
depiction
in government
bored
assembly
line
this
second
also
collection
the best of these are "1934," which
ests and criticism;*
projects
"The
life
Foundations
among
is aimless
leisure
auto
of
American
workers
the 1930's;
during
their
techniques,
and
and
exhibit
whose
inter
social
treats effects
of the De
a
Industry,"
had
fathers
their jobs are mechanized
la
by
empty:
In the Ford plant
the
generators
quickly on
move
a thousand
belts,
an hour.
move
the
For
now
men
New
to the belt when
comes.
shift
the most
the men
part
are
and
young,
go home to their
and drive
Fords,
or watch
TV,
and
sleep,
towards
then
around,
go work,
payday;
when
they walk home
on sidewalks
walk
they
marked W
PA 38;
their old men made
them, and they walk on
their
here
Notable
tional
manner,
associated
* For
[Robert
88
a
with
fathers.
is
the
coupled
William
entirely
with
Carlos
successful
the
type
Williams
discussion
of the
perceptive
"The
of Donald
Poetry
Bly]:
of
adoption
of observation
social
Hall,"
and,
later,
dimensions
The
Fifties,
a
conversa
flat,
deliberately
movement
and
rhythmical
senses
David
One
Ignatow.
of Hall's
3.
1959,
poetry,
pp.
see
32-46.
"Crunk"
the
on Hall's
attempt
formal
the
from
and
poet
Pound:
again
borrowing
or
his
While
objective."
and
"Crew-cuts"
worth's"
or
social
of
freedom,
later
poems?with
The
Alligator
the present
from
and
A
few
Articles"
Bride),
on the Corners"
Presences
"The
sion),
two omitted
the
to
Death,"
and
the
Articles,"
"Religious
rules
loss
lives,
he
dead,
on
urges
also force him
which will
the
their
of
are
realizes,
to
Come
in
of
kind
the
years
Alone'
Three
"The
Movements,"
in
sections
a more
seeks
its
previous
an old
writing.
church
agnostic,
of his own
lends
as
them;
they
from
of
in child
the deprivation
but
attitude,
skeptical
to take up the burden
intuition
attended
of his family lamenting
an
last
struggles
away
conclusion
breaking
The
he
ver
later
(the
penetrating
is
he
in
their
"Religious
"
in The
Contradictions"
gradually
visits
he
the
of
include
the Garden
Munch,"
of seven
or
him
voices
areas
into
In each of these poems Hall
hood and thinks about the dead members
and
such
effective
quite
These
"Revelations,
his
poet
Imagists,
subjective
as "Wool
when
(even
at six
arrive
will
first
of
self-knowledge
human
existence;
intelligence
in which
superficial
the
Bride).
that
are
Houses
"T
(reduced
from The Alligator
a
greater
degree
circumstances
of
toward
the
of
the
hints
strong
statement
achievements.
Edvard
from
'thing
Hall
oblique)
Dark
called
and
Poems
of
whether
Bride?rarely
offers
piece
of
beyond
reduce
the
(1964).
further
for
revised,
"Three
"Waiting
in The
poems
prepare
(shortened,
Alligator
of
more
and
ways
in
look
and
point
terms
exceptions
venture
striking
or
strange
this
it
put
of the
directness
afterwards with A Roof of Tiger Lilies
dividual
to
treatment
"Direct
to
phrase,
to
up
writing
or
his material,
economy,
simplicity
are
of the
imagery
implications
his
of
commentary,
political
in Pound's
it new,"
"make
of most
the
between
margin
to
part
confinements
life. The
all
speak
one
voices
of
pretense
is
stripped away:
"We who
not
do
in you.
only
that we who
croon
And
in
must
you
who
of
fullness
are
their
ance
and
opposites.
Pressing
convention
noises
make
illusion
says
and broken
cheated
to the
living
believe
in
feel
cheated
are
disorder,
again.
anything;
crooning."
of
fragmentation
them
stands
between
being;
to
contrariety
accept
To
understand/Today's
of
further
with
the
beyond
which
scrutinizes
Hall
Contradictions"
and
order
compelled
exist
not
"Revelations,
is
he
are
our words
You
perceptions
and
metry
end
Your
as
a
and
experience
is
nothingness
the
perceiving
fundamental
makes
solution
surfaces
his
intently
and
the
frequently
alternating
with
sym
the
self. At
principle:
tomorrow's
barriers
masked,
of
false
the
"Things
lie."
appear
con
poet
in the
death
and
terror,
metaphysical
and
"Marat's
"The
Death,"
Scream,"
inspired
are
in
most
and
shortened
Kiss"
later,
(the
satisfactory),
"Waiting
is true for all of these
in "The
Scream"
on the Corners."
Hall
What
poems:
says
back
turned
it is an existence
is laid bare,"
and
"Existence
itself, without
upon
fronts
emptiness,
poems
"The
89
by
Criticism
cruelty
Munch's
and
violence,
three
pictures,
versions
not Christ's,/blood
of death without
resurrection,/
Spiritual appeal. "The blood
to Munch's
winds flatly in the air," Hall observes of the surging background
agonized
repose
of
figure,
art that
and
has
that
concludes
distance."
this
Distance.
picture
It is
has
exactly
"not
such
even
the
emotional
pause,/the
ex
and
seen Hall
to eliminate from his
spacing we have already
periential
beginning
on
third
the
The
of
the Corners" brings
poem
poetry.
original sequence "Waiting
a new lucidity and intimacy of vision to bear upon the poet himself. In
keeping
with one of the main themes of the sequence, the poem finishes on a level of
and spiritual vacancy, but prior to that conclusion it enters a highly
psychological
area of the
subjective
speaker's life, probing and dramatizing vividly in pulsing
a crisis of the self, an excruciating
symbolic death and rebirth in the
rhythms
own fashion
psyche which leaves its victim changed but also emptied out. In its
some
affinities
with
of
Theodore
this poem displays
Roethke's work, "The Re
intense
with
the
for
and
of
self-revelation written by
turn,"
poetry
example,
Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath; but it is chiefly significant in terms of Hall's
efforts to increase the depth and authenticity of his poetic experience:
At least once before
my skin has felt rough fingers
pull my eyelids down,
my body laid
on the floor like clothes.
I struggled against the pit
like a bull in the yards.
I tried
to lift myself out by willing,
for I knew
I hated
what
the most.
I died, my eyes
opened to find the colors
After
as
as knives.
bright
It was
to die,
necessary
for a few moments
only
to give up
I owned,
whatever
Imight
taste,
become,
touch,
and
and
all
and the sight,
smell
of the particular world.
There, in the pit,
all willing gone from me,
no more
an
animal
in hatred,
"You" (I heard a voice)
"who have lost everything
want
90
nothing."
interior
The
Hall's
concentration
stresses
emotional
work
The
lines
art,
places
o? a barometer
reading
the
of
prophetic
in The Dark Houses
and
o? hidden
deliberate
turning
of
suggestive
phrasing,
a
involves
poem
be
achieved
The
writing.
it cannot
but
is "The Three Movements,"
the
uncertain,
or
poetic
by
simply
imaginative
to
looking
and
ef
searching
it also leads him toward the brink of anticipated
forts of the poet's mind,
in his
it as
take.
final poem
irregular
through
its
and
poem
dilemmas
soon
will
this
o!
and
to
quest
tradition,
changes
his
replenish
from
learning
others:
It is not in the books
that he is looking, nor for
a new
nor
book,
documents
the
for "a new book"
lack of desire
The
of
restrictions
poet
but
he
what
a sudden
like
occurring
I think, a wish
indicates,
convention;
literary
either,
effortlessly
. . .
kind
of any
event
to reach beyond
is not
seeks
to
available
the
in nature:
. . . nor
does he expect
it to be like the wind,
that, when
touch
without
you
a sound
of
it, tears
nor
tearing,
like the rain
water
that
becomes
image that comes
The
person,
see
this
more
make
"Since
velop
sensitive,
alert,
as
figure
Whitman,
Yeats,
must
re-creation
of
or Neruda
Rilke,
reality
in order
into
imagine
to
the
no
In
his
image
himself":
He
expects when
itwill be
like
a man,
he finds it,
visible,
alive
to what has happened
will happen, with
firmness
exactly
measure
like
91
seeing
is, without
of
change,
documents,
or rain
Criticism
and what
in its face,
what
in the
grass.
and
not
in
short,
writing;
of a
poet
it
in
their
recognizes
or as Robert
as
a
not
is difficult
sense
the
over
Hall
is that of a
his goal
and
experience;
poet's
themselves
make
has
he envisages
self,
poetry.
transform
to
[America]
country
to
learn
to him when
attentive
resolute,
a
of
life, more
over
himself
the
sun.
in the
grass
poet,
in which,
art
to
say,
to assimilate
must
that
he
Bly
remarks,
a
poet
to
de
In a second
requires
be
accepted
the
not/for
as
the
whereby
into focus;
the
self whose
poetic
"the movement/that
stanza
last
the
he
acknowl
a process
thinking,"
are
the mind
of
aspects
the
emerge
unmistakable:
is exact,
identity
in
must
alternatives
intrigues/all
startling,
he
what
perhaps
dismissed
unconscious
the
will
It is
the movement which works
which discovers itself
in alleys, in
drawn
of
image
unexpected
through,
not
sleep,
expected and not
in the books of words
nor
and hesitations;
previously
all. But
after
oblique,
"movement"
this
the
possibilities
the
covert,
from
his doubts
and
finding,"
only
that he has slighted
edges
the
stanza he entertains
"is
various
the
and phrases
and
paints
edges
of
scenery.
It is, he says,
familiar
come
when
upon,
glimpsed
as
in a mirror
unpredicted,
and it appears
to understand.
It is
like himself,
of
close
sets
out
after
of
With
the
"The
Three
only visible.
awareness
sleep,
unexplored
own
fashion
the moods
of
poetry
departs
areas
The
experience.
the
of inwardness,
regions
reverie
and daydream,
ergies of the interior life, the life of images and dreams
and
persist,
this endeavor
what
he
Whitman,
Rilke,
Roethke,
among
Hall
has
has
some
Lawrence,
others,
termed
"the
Trakl,
certain
his
of
can
voice"
Desnos,
more
past
practices
into which
he moves
the
wherever
rich with
speak
modern
illustrious
remarkably
Breton,
and
vatic
and
peripheries
the en
association,
be
Vallejo,
immediate
In
heard.
as
such
predecessors
Neruda,
the
and
preconscious,
is to say,
which
at
announced
from
are
of
resources
imaginative
Hall's
territories
for
his
new
of
Movements"
and
Eluard,
contemporaries?Rob
a poetry
ert Bly, James Wright, W. S. Merwin, for example?who
began to create
as
an
in
interview
in
Art
1963
noted
The
Sullen
"which,"
), "simply
(
Bly
printed
the
disregards
conscious
and
the
intellectual
structure
of
the mind
and,
entirely
by the use of images, tries to bring forward another reality from inward experi
ence." Meanwhile,
several New York poets, John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, and
the late Frank O'Hara, closely linked with the influential painting avant garde
(and,
and
niques
92
oddly
enough,
originally
were
their
introducing
into
poetry.
Bly)
students
own
mode
at Harvard
of
at
irrationalism
the
same
and
time
surrealist
as
Hall
tech
In
various
and
essays
lectures
Hall
discusses
creative
the
in
process
himself and in the work of other poets (see, for instance, his introduction to A
Choice of Whitmans
Verse, 1968), and he observes that the critical and tech
nical
powers
operate
tails which
Inward
the
Muse,
criticism
which
in
ages
the
a
"theoretical
sudden
of
creation
a
later
lecture
in
in the Michigan
and
release,
the
human
every
the Greek
word
within
premise:
Vates
voice.
was
The
this
and
material,
provides
Vatic
Voice:
Fall
Review,
Waiting
he tries
1969)
from
expression
im
and
of words
coming
de
in The
thus he rejects,
which
the
creativity,
nature
of
and
intuitions,
images,
on
Quarterly
ourselves. Hall begins by seeking a fundamental
A
of
on
attendance
passive
flow
of inspiration;
dualism
it." But
(printed
to describe
in moments
offers
shapes
and Listening
the
upon
instinctively
the mind
far
within
principle:
being
for
there
is
vatic
the
the
bard,
inspired
the words
of a
To most
this voice
speaking
god.
people,
in dream,
in unremembered
and
dream.
only
only
speaks
voice
into
The
shout
the
but
ear,
may
messages
sleeping
a
guard
from
at the horned
remembering,
the waking
gate prevents
interpreting.
listening,
is
It
mind
vatic
the
voice (which is not necessarily able to write good poetry,
or even
passable grammar) which rushes forth the words
of excited recognition, which
supplies what we call in
spiration.
And
metaphor:
me!"
through
the West
Wind."
the
For
hear
this
the
demands
cloud
the
voice,
of
or
poet,
to listen
as Lawrence
tree
the
for
for
it,
the
practicality,
any
away
noise
man,
it
from
the
and
or to invent
to make
poems,
only
it feels
it is
because
and
healing
good,
to be able
to love
and
stand
ourselves
"not
is necessary
strictures
distraction
a new
perfectly
wind
that
Shelley's
vatic
voice,
passive
to the wind.
passive
is
indeed
the
says. Or
to the
are
We
is a
breathing-into,
I, not
I, but
"Not
expressive
blows
to
a
inspiration,
of
"Ode
as
in Hall's
of
our
logic
urbanized
of
theory
because
linguistics,
it
helps
to
Attention
to
opinion
or
but
reasoning,
society,
because
us to under
therapeutic,
re
other
this voice
people."
as Hall
vives
animates
and
the
the
of the world,
life,
imaginative
apprehension
to rediscover
children
and
the poet,
if his work
needs
know
others,
says,
among
true
is to achieve
A
few
devoted
resonance,
depth,
poetic
quality.
paragraphs
on dream
as a means
to Hall's
reverie
deliberate
reliance
and
of
habits,
personal
to
notes
and
the vatic
voice
the
that
(he
stirring
imagination
stimulating
speech
the "Two
characteristics
that
the vatic
voice
normal
from
discourse
distinguish
are
it is
that
it, and
we
always
may
very
and
original,
well,
that we
uttered
having
to
feel
passive
its words,
not
are
it. We
know
by
surprised
we mean")
what
are of particular interest for the
light they cast on experiences in back of much
of the poetry included in A Roof of Tiger Lilies and The Alligator Bride. Then
too
to
join
93
these
disclosures
comprehend
in
him
what
dreaming
Criticism
may
a
remind
poet
it as we
us,
has
as Gaston
formulated
read.
One
Bachelard
from
can
his
likewise
how
remarks,
creative
see
reverie
resemblances
in order
we
must
between
and
intentions
Hall's
and their imagery
the
and
investigation
by Andr?
conducted
with
experimentation
dreams,
sleep,
Robert Desnos,
Breton,
Sur
and other
realists.
a
sleeping
tried to keep
I have
Sometimes
lot.
short
Taking
in touch with
can
naps
a
be
this vatic
means
great
of
voice
by
the
keeping
channel open. There is that wonderful
long, delicious slide or drift
down heavy air to the bottom of sleep, which you touch for only a
then
and
moment,
an
through
I come
out
On
dreams,
scenes
remember
or
and
can
you
watch
You
born
being
is also the deliberate
There
which
are
tions
always
the words
fantasy
is
There
I want
little
are
details
passively
Listen.
in
speaking
into
is a way
observe
on
a
hum
another
vision,
an
dream
that
you
this table? What
re
tune,
hear
usually
of
part
with
is
association
The
something.
When
you
in
yourself.
associa
These
and
your
mind,
I don't
mean
and
analyst,
there
he
mention,
casually
did it look like?" Often
I am
When
important.
listening
to choose
I don't
of me,
attempt
so
out
happens,
There
also
movements.
peripheral
a dream
about
the
but
the tune and you will
to call
talk
say, "What about
may well
us
tell
commenting
If you
table
optical.
battered
anything
is an old
these
to
trying
reason.
your
recent
action.
something
loosely,
the
quite
mind
That
is the spirit dying
farming of daydream.
that go with
of
part
some
or on
some
dreams?
dreams?and
again.
associations,
strange
frequently
for
there
member
some
daydream
the
phrases
from
poem.
but it is not the only virtue of dream. Dream
the underworld,
swiftly,
colors.
bright
not with
naps,
or
phrases
or
dreams,
nap
waking
a
into
directly
images
I
or
phrases
minute
twenty
more
up
again
in
sometimes
floating
images,
refreshed with the experience of losing control
of apparent total freedom. I wake with great
occasion,
night
these
take
or
fifteen
of poetry, but wholly
and entering a world
energy.
either
the
of
world
these
of
is
there
incredible
to
what
something
is most
important, I try to listen to all of it. I never know what is going to
be the most important message until I have lived with it for a while.
Very frequently, the real subject matter is something only glimpsed,
as
first
it were
out
With
nature
terials
of
of
a
these
poem.
will
94
result
in a
of
and
the
And
these
gathered
poetry
of
of
materials,
Often
the
association
ultimately
leads
at
which
to
un
the
did not know before.
of Hall's
observations
"movement"
eye.
irrelevant
and tells what we
that
of the self, when
corner
crazy
appears
glance
derstanding,
the
the
of
the
mind
whose
before
in
us
the
sources
we
act
can
of
lie
in
better
understand
discovering
subterranean
and shaped into the final form of the completed
dream
and
inward
vision,
a kind
of
surrealism
the
ma
levels
poem,
already
in modern
familiar
the
of
then,
of
deep
shifts
from
poem,
to
the
ing
his
"spirit"
with
but
of
techniques
or vision,
mean
not
is toward
or
outside
the
poetry
Emphasis,
external
and
poet
animating
considerations
formal
that
various
employing
or
looseness
greater
a
"ultimately
Whitman.
about
the
still finds Hall
tendency
general
literature,
words
verse-making,
the force within
does
this
one
altogether;
the
in Hall's
share,"
Obviously,
images.
dispensed
vices;
the
American
Latin
and
European
all men
mind
aspects
relat
are
prosodie
of
openness
de
form,
away from iambics and rhyming. The strength of such poetry depends to a con
of lines as both
siderable degree on the phrasing, the rhythm and movement
units
within
and musical
imaginative
or
vision.
and
of
intensity
authenticity
to dreams,
to awaken
which
the reader
ficialities
consume
that
reservoirs
of
life
of
imagination,
of the sacred,
his
ey's, and Wright's,
though
involved. The mysterious
this transformation of his
in
briefly but evocatively
Lilies:
Tiger
on
aim
Its
say,
and
existence
Poetry
the world,
of
this
and
in some
does
is
is to
outward
him.
within
dreaming
as it
certainly
as well
the whole,
as
finally,
turn him
indicate
order
even
may
diction,
said
phrase,
the
immense
super
hidden
the
rehabilitates
be
imagery,
paradoxical
from
away
the
of Hall's,
poems
on
in a
to
Merwin's,
of
powers
a sense
revive
Dick
Bly's,
there is no specifically orthodox theological framework
range of poetic possibilities disclosed to Hall through
art is best described, however, by the poet himself
"The Poem," placed in the first section of A Roof of
It discovers by night
what the day hid from it.
Sometimes it turns itself
an animal.
into
In summer it takes long walks
by itself where meadows
fold back from ditches.
Once it stood still
in a
quiet
row
of machines.
Who knows
what it is thinking?
What this kind of poetry is thinking is a question readers coming upon
it for the first time may well ask, for unlike, say, a Metaphysical
poem of witty
and
conceits
learned
Surrealism,
why
perhaps
many,
Italy,
Spain,
never
Rilke,
engaged
it
allusions,
the
Expressionism,
Latin
America,
and
most
of
our
reason
analysis?a
Ger
of
France,
poets
contemporary
as
a few
and
such
Val?ry
exceptions
critics
the past
three
of
decades,
to
little
yields
with
important
rigorous
logical
while European critics have long been studying them. If that situation in Amer
ica is being revised now, it is chiefly due to the prose writings of poets them
selves
"The
work
time
95
and
to
stands
Poem"
and
we
the
as
cannot
an
increase
extraordinary
a
as
statement
both
example
translate
Criticism
of
it. We
the
substance
in
of
the
understand
of
the
the
enterprise
sources
and
that
poem
this
from
of
translation.
procedures
is so, yet
its
images
of
at
into
Hall's
his
the
new
same
a more
and
rational
Dickey's,
James
assimilable
readily
use
up
the process
of exegesis.
and
evokes
that
and
the
from
the
imaginative
matter
the
and
imagery
them
toward
follow
is
which
poem
in
inward
rather
of
phrase
the
by
in the interior life
originates
draw
implications
the center
a
to borrow
is,
paraphrase?that
or creative
Just as this type of poetry
so
life,
must
reader
prose
the
than
try
I am
for
the
to
poem,
them
pull
not
and
Of
course,
inspection
explanation.
saying
but
rather
that
is
the
inherent
meaning
nothing,
implicit,
in the
of
and movement
lines
them.
of
arrangement
images
particular
bearing
a
is true
are
To
be
this
all poems,
of virtually
but we
here
with
sure,
dealing
is
kind
that
context
within
of poem
whose
irrational,
purposively
imaginative
or
evocation,
indirection,
emerges
only
by
meaning
suggestion,
Only
obliquity.
or
on
own
within
the
to use Hall's
of
de
them,
body
by
images,
living
floating
a
do we
of
then
themes
and
motifs
point
scription,
approach
comprehension;
are revealed.
make
themselves
of emotion
As
the
of
lines
felt, patterns
opening
away
that
the
poem
"The Poem"
imply, the poetic
the
reverie,
looks to the "night" world
imagination
and
preconscious
demands
which
world
poem
means
the
not
lucidity,
unconscious
in
rational
mystery,
to
preference
of dream,
the
daylight
ind?finite
not
coherence,
ness or
suggestion. This poem also exhibits what might be called the infinite
capacity of the poetic imagination for extending itself, for rejecting any kinds of
restriction
tells
the
upon
machines:
meadows,
the
reader
In
realms
the
something
or
acteristic
qualities
starts
off with
poem
as
ually,
sociations,
ward,
roots
in
first
ginning
over
his
til,
the
poet's
at
with
earlier
of
psyche
in
poem
stanzas
images
interior
its
the
the
the
perceptions,
of
the close
these
begin
drama.
now
become
collection,
speaker
memories
the
second
provides
snow
watches
are
stanza,
the
night
and
situation
Snow
stirred,
his
is in the oak.
the thick, whitening
air which
the weight
the
presses
on the
pane
I remember
96
the wind
drives,
of the sun
snow
of my
snows
window.
and my
poem
or
atmo
is that of reverie, day
which
dream
are
an
introductory
outside
falling
then hidden
sight
walking
from
explored
material
for
seems
his
work.
window;
affective
blurred,
as
grad
as
and
in
slips
close
to
their
within,
illustration.
his
a
Frequently,
then
or
they
essential
char
displays
displacement.
or observation,
cally outside in a blinding snow, though he has really moved
the border of his inner world and its vision:
Behind
the
barriers
fall,
focus,
rigid
to assert
themselves:
the poem
thus
remain
of these
The
themes
poems
but
writing,
the poet
of
in A Roof of Tiger Lilies
of poems
summer
of?animals,
partake
these
for
possibilities
should
be
poetry
apprehended.
the dominant
mood
remarks,
narrative
of
enigmatic
of
condensation,
ellipsis,
an external,
objective
mind
loosens
its narrow
memories,
unfolding
of Hall's
those
the
the more
such
can
it
experience
evocativeness
strange
of how
correspondence
sphere of the majority
dream,
of
"Snow,"
In
the
as
it
be
takes
un
resonances
if he were
physi
inside himself,
to
through their first fall in cities,
or drunk
asleep
with
the slow, desperate
The
snow
with
other
In his
snows.
number
any
begin
is
the
enter
as
recognize
the snow,
snow
does
about
it
to
order
of
sources.
understand
ple
gestion,
page.
of this
my
I am
pen
me.
for
to
and
sleepy
a
is
here
I become
Quarterly
It
way.
the snow,
frequent
with
sleepy
almost
hallucinating
out of
wanders
my
poem;
myself
spirit
come
into my
I realize
head.
Suddenly,
snow.
I must
first
every
year,
especially
emotion.
I try
but
ways,
the year.
that
over-determined
guage,
a nameless
with
in Michigan
(published
state
a
preluding
and
phrases
to me,
this
in
of
snow
first
snowing,
I relax,
daydream,
Inward Muse
notes:
Hall
1967),
Poems
falling.
eyes
lecture, The
Winter
Review,
in my
blurs
one
in
is,
thing
to,
have
heavy
multi
to
responsive
another
down
and
to
leads
that
write
lan
psychoanalytic
with
affect,
it must
diffuse
true
be
trying
over-determination.
is burdened
attention
my
as
moving,
to reach,
Snow
over-determined,
Being
keep
it.
It
exploit?the
I
into
sug
the
sources
multiple
It must be added that Hall continues by denying that he is merely taking "dic
tation from [his] unconscious mind" here, for he insists that such dictation is too
rapid and prolific to be recorded verbatim; instead, the trained critical instincts
busily
Hall's
ment
that
and
accept
descriptive
of
"weight
and the drop away
blend
of memories
implications
search
leads
outset,
are
things
sion with
to
sees
mortality
the wind.
whatever
story
Following
transformation,
ness."
97
But
the
Criticism
snow
snow.
The
the
third
interior
the
against
speaker's
for
quest
the
poet;
At
concludes.
inaugurates
life
psychic
before
the poem
in
of
turn
the
window,
a
stanza
phase
in
in
into an indistinct
finally
or
of existence
origins
as
the
of
representative
and
this
discloses
significance
as we
noted,
evident,
already
recognize
state
direct
the irrational perception
into recollection,
the
is what
down,
to the
ending with
the
forcing
in
of
all
obses
deep-seated
earlier
the
to which
decline
a
the
this
poetry:
must
even
if it
to stay in the air with
of
stages
snow
destined,
come
by
associations
back
Snow
is
But we
appear.
they
initial
the
the poem:
of
the details
from perception
unified
and
Hall
sun"
the
as
images
first
is in the oak."),
("Snow
the
and
reject words
the
remarks
Like
struggles
the strength
an old man,
I touch I turn
of
this
endowing
last three
death.
passage,
everything
stanzas
of
snow
the
as
is viewed
it
covers
poem
with
perform
an
"the
an
of
agent
substance
analysis,
and
reversal
after
of
white
their
own
of
fashion,
the
response
which
earth,
snow
to
response
poet's
at the beginnings
of his
aroused
previously
in
the
life. The
to
attempt
associations
submerged
trace
the
that
of
origins
fall of snow towards
inevitable
and
the
fear
of
the
is
death,
linked to a birth trauma; an individual resists birth as a fall into the world
same way as a sick and
man
culminating at last in death in the
dying
fights
or
his
not
end.
Hall's
method
of
does
rationalistic
analysis
against
employ
logical
now
for
means,
of
he
proceeds
memories
again
and
emotions
to
back
by reverie,
reaching
connecting
along
sense
revive
within
himself
the child's
strands
of
reality:
So the watcher sleeps himself
back to the baby's eyes.
The tree, the breast, and the floor
are limbs of him, and from
his
he
eyes
which
a skin
extends
over
grows
the world.
The baby iswhat must
have
snow.
like
fallen,
He
resisted,
the old man
struggles inside the airy tent
to keep on
breathing.
Birth is the fear of death.
the way
The
stanza
final
as well
that
pattern
moval
companied
Rilke's
poem
and
its
the
last
line
have
gentle
seems
locked
this
the
I cannot
to the
and
falling-sickness
can't
falling
the
statement
to find what
of
of
descent
all
B.
(J.
through"
Hall
finishes
poem
return
are
"We
lines,
none
withstands,"
fall
fate
perishability?the
cannot
of man
with
falling
that
falling.
but
the
re
the
ac
snow,
recall
may
This
hand's
"One
whose
Leishman's
discover
to a
amounts
transla
behind
the
to become
as
of water":
cycles
is what
Snow
The
the saving God whom
precisely
"door/to
revivification.
rays,
universal
of
his inability
life-giving
a
by
general
its
with
haunting
"Autumn,"
hands/this
or
survival
sun
too?/all
falling
tion)
in
assertion
flat
the poet declares
includes
the
of
a
once
at
makes
as of snow?and
melts.
open
the door
of water.
cycles
The sun has withdrawn
itself
and the snow keeps
falling,
and something will always be
falling.
"We
children," Hall
in
undertakes
want
to
affirms
"The
regress
in
the
service
in The Vatic Voice,
Snow"
and
a
variety
of
the
ego,
we
and it is exactly
of
other
poems.
want
such a regression he
"The
Grass,"
a
poem
thematically allied with "The Snow," likewise starts with a visual perception
which rapidly leads to a hidden chain of thoughts compelling
the poet's imagi
nation
to
poems
and his childhood
98
merge
with
the
essences
sequences
of
nature.
Like
of The Lost
Roethke
in his
Son and Praise
greenhouse
to the End!
to uncover
Hall wishes
in
self
the
the identity and significant
an
of
intimacy
or
imaginative
him
relation of things with
union
visionary
them:
with
I look at the grass
When
out my
in rain,
window
I know that it happens
Under
again.
new
among
grass,
stones
of
probe
and
downward
the
trees,
builds
everything
or alters
itself.
I am led
a warm
through
with
my
eyes
to hear
the words
of water.
roots
I listen,
of
process
initiates
neously
with
of
the moist
The
descent
covered,
grass.
identification
a
fall
("I am led/through
state
blocks
cessfully
the
the
with
towards
earth,
the
sleep,
a warm
rational
ordinary
a
into
lapsing
descent/with
of
trees
of
or
reverie
the
simulta
daydreaming
mind
conscious
suc
which
eyes covered")
my
operations
roots
and
grass,
and
per
the poet to listen for a more fundamental voice within himself, a voice that
will disclose his relationship with the natural world. The speech he wants to hear
mits
is formed
from
"the words/of
and
water,"
tions of that liquid element with
character
for
for
search
Gaston
Bachelard
souls,"
reverie
A
inside.
the man
elemental
writes
intimacy?of
enters
into
who
and
sensibilities
an
lution
pursues
hints
but
alities
for existence.
a
Water,
some
form,
repose,
intimacy
the mysteries
its
learn
its
of
possessing
of water
course
strongly
that
descent
at
the
element
as
also
the
earth,
obvious.
"For
Poetics
participation
secrets
rebirth
of
which
concludes
imminent
arrival
such
womb
and
is a
destroyer
of
as well?in
figure of Shiva:
for
waiting
then,
this
of
short,
"The
reso
definite
for
in
the
his nerves
energies,
image
In
himself.
any
where,
life,
is
up
en
in the life of the
for
stimulus
Sea,"
as
mystery
human?opens
dream
which
animating
affective
in "The
feminine,
without
of
the
things
"the
with
vibrant
grass
expectancy,
fill
Unlike
"The
them.
Snow,"
the qualities of the paradoxical
Criticism
and renewal
fertility,
of Reverie,
is
which
always
So
the
of matter."
associa
traditional
to be a living part of nature,
containing
enumerated
universal
with
of
to
of
attributes
central
it appears
identified
roots
the
voice
the
recall
more
into a profound
may
resemble
we
purification,
poem
in The
final image he has felt himself
life-renewing
Grass"
he
where
when
becomes
of
cosmos,
poem's
09
the
the poet here draws him
gages
the
in
of Hall's
birth,
potenti
Hall,
has
expanded
serenity
something
or
She is the mother of calms
and the hot grasses;
the mother of cliffs
and of the grinding sand;
she is the mother of the dead
for
uninhibited
mendation
which
habitant
the
in
time
poets
and
revives.
youth
interest,
the
them
now
way
of seeing and feeling
on which
the
for what
the world,
of
impressions
are
and
they
generalized.
can
and
his essential
experience
register
his
a
lives
tricycle,
Nobody
among
and
a
dog,
a friend.
owns him.
He walks by himself, beside
the black pool, in the cave
where icicles of rock
rain
hard
and
the walls
with
water,
are
rough
the light of stone.
He hears some low talking
without
words.
The hand of a wind
touches him.
He walks until he is tired
or
somebody
calls
him.
Then he leaves right away.
100
it
long
an
not
in
in
consist
such
details
is
here
awakening
of the child Hall
powers
Suddenly,
this
sensitive
his
primitive,
a proximity to the roots and
spoiled awareness of
origins of his being
cave
of
the
and
the
I think
of
the
image
repeated image
pool)?and
as
too?are
to
a
Hall
into
himself
far
necessary
being
poet; by delving
to carry the child in him back from
he
has
the
sleep,
acquired
gift
child's fresh mental and perceptual faculties :
He
consid
accomplish
past;
The
purity,
a
that lost figure of
but acutely
with
by
remained
yet
offer.
of
recom
existence was
does
plainly
from
imaginative
are
reanimation
practice
to
desire
has
Grass"?of
invention?a
In "The Child"
incidents
"The
the
of
actual
who
however,
or
poem
an arousal of the latent sensibilities
recognizing
but
history
in
into
the
inner ear
boy whose
does
and
painters?and
scenes,
memories,
particular
awakening
as one
in
of recollection
finds
poet
Voice
perception
and put
life of the adult.
Hall's
was,
Vatic
of that boy, whose
personal
of the unconscious
poet's
made
and
to the persona
finally brings him
terminated
been
course,
of modern
in The
of
a
envisages
the mature
modes
imaginative
of
has,
number
"The Child" Hall
stirrings?as
recommendation
whispers
waters.
His
primal
childhood's
ago
gulls.
and
the
the
erable
among
that in his poem
No wonder
waits
rolls
which
submarine,
a beach
on
boy's
solitude
un
(in the
to non
enough
of that
he plays with his friend
Later when
he
suddenly
stops
to hear
the black
water.
in A Roof of Tiger Lilies
in The Alligator Bride) we
From the discussion of these few pieces
("The Grass" and "The Child" are slightly revised
recurrent
to notice
begin
of
proportion
concrete
ent,
or
scent
death
in a
pears
in evidence
in
visible
and
these
or
rebirth
poem.
single
I think, to the kind of poetry
this
with
poetry
reader
watchful
and materials
clear
the
"The
results
poems
other
familiar
the
I
this
the
exploration which
or
reverie
the
a
themes,
starts to write
Hall
as
is used
it
the
validity,
the
themes
general
with
engagement
personal
a
necessity
subjective
"The
and
Child."
Grass,"
poet's
ap
always
pattern
of such
unconscious
of
objectivity,
scheme
symbolic
entire
the manifestation
is
merely
of de
one
universal
credit
of
poem
theme
of
specific
statement
which
words,
"The
Snow,"
is already
at
the center
of
self
stands
the
of
squarely
figure
in
or transformation
the
of
involved
pattern
change
who
has
in an
of
the
alteration
experi
speaker
the
Consequently,
recurrent
scheme,
this
the
a
in a
large
is a differ
Hall
occupy
suggest,
nor
of
imagery
a sense
create
perceives
of his work?in
in
enough
to
helps
also
each
instance,
of psychic
the
while
And
book.
in Hall's
is
As
poetic
can
We
that
patterns
poems
recovery.
in each
form
unique
in a
thematic
abstractly?for
Speaking
contours
the
of which
poems.
realization
scheme
traces?the
or
motifs
the
for
ultimately
the inner dramas they portray. We have observed in "The Child" how the
descended
into himself to awaken the dormant childhood figure resi
has
poet
enced
In
dent
there.
ing,"
and
"Wells,"
"The
such
condition,
a new
bilities
his
of
vision
of
effect,
Field"
briefly,
I was
lying
a few minutes,
on
by
the
realities
a
sofa
to a new
at once
beyond
mortality
a few details
these
awake
experience,
to his
external
because
to rest,
In
vision
momentary
and
to
the
of
sleep
frightened.
near me
My own death was drifting
in the middle of life. The strong body
blurred and diminished into the dark waters.
The flesh floated away.
101
Criticism
or
poems
life.
perhaps.
I was
but
given
I felt my body sag into the hole of sleep.
All
attaining
of the world
to
not
incidental
largely
an
second
and
of
being.
the
project
specifically
of
aspects
on
focus
serves
"Sleeping"
it is both
poem's
death
journey,
regenerated
and
the possi
dimension
are
"Sleep
Cloud,"
a
and "The Old Pilot's Death,"
psychic
character.
their
on
of
entrance
ventures
these
is startled
are
interest
the
gaining
we
occasionally
of the
poet's
portions
and
responses
processes
poem
a comment
phases
in the
or wholeness
integration
Thirty-Five,"
"Digging,"
and
"The Tree
the
Days,"
or versions
inward
of an
"The
apprehending
While
paradigmatic
and
of them
napping
presents
all
"O Flodden
for
"At
Water,"
a Bear,"
dying,
existence?in
a new
religious.)
the outward
interior
also
symbolic
mode
of
(His two elegies,
"Cold
as
Hall
Stump"
or
crisis,
psychic
as
poems
"Self-Portrait,
the
as
embodiment
section
dissolution:
Hall,
a
As
water
before,
threatening
convictions
the
has
dream
of
personal
source
and
and
of
also
annihilation
into the unconscious
the descent
about
of a
primal
destruction
aspect
death.
the
Here
Hall's
for
prepares
life of the self in the closing
stanza:
The shadow is a tight passage
that no one will be spared
who goes down
to the deep well.
In
remembers.
something
sleep,
Three times since Iwoke
from the first sleep,
it has drunk that water.
Awake, it is still sleeping.
in his explorations, and
These final lines disclose the poet's persistence
the waters which at first seemed to promise nothing but death have become
waters to be drunk and suggest healing or renewal. The "shadow," in Jungian or
an
is
analytical
psychology,
and
contains
qualities
unconscious
of
opposite
consciousness
has
the
repressed,
or
ego
conscious
in
"aspects,"
the
self
of
words
von Franz from Man and His Symbols
(ed. by Jung), "that mostly be
to
the
and
that
could
just as well be conscious. In some
personal sphere
long
M.-L.
the
aspects,
his
can
shadow
consist
also
the individual's personal
outside
to
efforts
the
probe
recesses
appears
initially both negative
account
in
the
open;
has been
the
Confrontation
last
line
to
brought
Several
of
the
consciousness,
locate
poems
between
them:
the
cloud
the
tree
goes
teaches
and
through
us
the
thus
tree
the
when
collective
inner
his
develops,
so
poem
that
implies
what
and
it becomes
down
other
the
but
so
sensibilities?or
a
positive
rite
of
pas
can
of integration
shadow
concealed
or
inaugurate
remarks
various
"becomes
which
assimilated.
which
and the Cloud" Hall
is cut
the
continues
to more
ordeal,
the way
source
a
from
experience
turned
is an
before
recognized,
in nature
changes
an
that
be
shadow
be undergone
stem
that
it is clear that Hall
world
the
metamorphosis,
of matter,
solidity
our
factors
terrifying may
with
in the self. In "The Tree
changes
taxes,
of
and
the self which must
sage within
and
end.
of
life." In this poem
other
clouds,"
elusive
while
things,
consequently,
of the
cloud
quality
I understand
promote
the differences
the
con
poem's
clusion:
The tree is hard to the hands.
To touch the cloud
hardens
"The
mate
relationship,
the
touching.
and
Stump"
"Digging,"
a communion
really,
more
ambitious
between
the
poems,
of
person
exhibit
the
poet
an
and
inti
the
life of nature; both pieces achieve visionary experience, though in quite separate
ways, for in "The Stump" it is earned as the result of the poet's gradual approach
to and contemplation
of the object, while "Digging" starts almost immediately
on
the
plane
Stump," Hall
102
of
dream
offers details
or
surrealist
vision.
of the cutting down
Beginning
descriptively
in
of a dead oak tree on his
"The
lawn
in mid-winter;
tree.
felled
This
of exultancy
elation
affective
scious,
of
is,
to a
being
in
this
indicative
for the poet
the
of
routine
seemingly
section
first
until
the
last
stanza,
seizes the poet at the thought of the
suddenly
course,
assumes
is taking place
what
occurs
unusual
nothing
an odd mood
where
of
responses
external
in his
event;
uncon
the
inward
self
stages of a symbolic
the preliminary
drama:
Yet I was happy that itwas coming down.
"Let it come down!" I kept saying to myself
a
with
that was
joy
to me.
strange
Though the oak was the shade of old summers,
I loved the guttural saw.
With
the
section
second
the
"nude
is reduced
trunk"
a man
by
a
with
saw
to
the stump of the poem's title; but, strangely perhaps, the stump is resistant to
his attempts to plane it down to smooth wood, even with the
ground, and at last
he
abandons
the
near
draw
the
stump,
Roots
and
task,
under
stiffen
the
in
leaving
his
with
frozen
section
three
imagination
the
street,
the
only
upon
dilating
ground
around
coiled
to
poet
the
then
observe,
latter's
properties:
and wires.
pipes
The stump is a platform of blond wood
in the gray winter. It is nearly level
with the snow that covers the little garden around it.
It is a door into the underground of old summers,
but if I bend down to it, I am lost
in crags and buttes of a harsh landscape
that
goes
the wood
rain
and
on
infinitely
the
of
recall
Hall's
rence
and
seasonal
stump's
upper
snow
melts
surface
another
section
of
us,
prepare
dimension
blackens
the
"there
is a
"edges
pale
of
of
an
as
close-up
The
the
disused
symbolism
with
the
as
viewed
mind.
poet's
"along
of water
employment
If the
last
there
the
wood
stump,
or seen in the larger perspective
topography
the
the
whether
appearances,
dominate
change,
into
deeply
tunnels.
altering
penetrating
phrases
into
leap
imaginative
stanzas.
Weathering
move
and rugged
frequent
renewal.
certain
the
the disused
stump's
snow"
thawed
outset,
along
extending
effects
and
the
snow
thawed
backwards
Now
When
forever.
darkens into the ground;
does
its
a wash
in
taken
at
but
of
can
of
cycle
descriptive
to water,
reference
experience
the
trunk,"
overlay,/like
imagery
tunnels"
remains
poem
the
of
two
the
the
chalk
center
on
of
"rain
only
recur
at
the
for
the
closing
of the
darkness."
Next we are told that "the desert of the win ter/has moved inside" the stump. In
is set against the darkness in a
the first passage the trace of chalky whiteness
manner highly suggestive of both purification
from and resistance to the nega
tive
or
deathly
connotations
of
the
encroaching
dark.
The
second
shows the sterility of winter passing far into the stump, implies
the tree?a step that precedes any possibility of rebirth.
by
103
Criticism
passage,
which
its absorption
At
this
point
not of
are witnesses
we
those
of
or
Baudelaire
the
occurs
break
familiar
new
abundant with
world,
a radical
life, rich with
St.-Jean
the
the
an
with
continuity;
of an exotic
poem's
but
yard
the magical
filled
Perse,
in
in
stump
visionary
of voyages
promise
dream
exquisite
suddenly,
like
remi
detail
niscent perhaps of parts of Rimbaud's Illuminations. Only in the final lines does
it has
the stump emerge again but transformed forever by the vision of which
been the focus:
There is a sailing ship
beached in the cove of a small island
the warm
where
water
is
turquoise.
The hulk leans over, full of rain and sand,
and shore flowers grow from it.
Then it is under full sail in the Atlantic,
on a blue day,
heading for the island.
sweet alyssum
She has planted
in the holes
the wood
where
was
rotten.
It grows thick, it bulges
like flowers contending from a tight vase.
Now the stump sinks downward into its roots
with a cargo of rain
and white blossoms that last into October.
In the terms of Hall's imaginative transfiguration the stump takes on the form of
the crippled ship which, planted with flowers by the mysterious,
anonymous
fertility goddess of the concluding stanza whom we can best simply identify as a
revitalizing
to
voyage
an
explanation
that
energies
and
renewal
"sinks
water,
poet
see
tree
terns
cut
in nature
are
unknown
existence,
is
character.
What
rendered
of
capable
its
making
is not
matters
the
this cyclical
By recognizing
uncovered
the
events
of
here,
anyhow,
or its end
but
rather
the
voyage
transforming,
life-giving
underlie
the
entire
dreamlike
The
of descent
poet's
pattern
images.
in the
is contained
last
three
the
with
lines, where
stump,
heavy
into
so
its roots,"
downward
and
sends
durable
up
by
doing
of
"white blossoms."
has
or
nature
of
principle
an "island"
the
down;
has
meaning
thus we
its
of
his
own
comprehend
correspondences
in
of death
pattern
strange
that attention
the
"deep
and rebirth,
in
desire
early
to these
where
mind,"
the
the
to
poem
processes
similar
or
pat
followed.
In "Digging" the poet imagines himself returned home in the middle
of the night after a long day of ecstatically pleasurable work in his garden; the
and fecundity: "when
atmosphere of the day and the garden exude potentiality
lilies/lift themselves out of the ground while you watch them." From here on the
poem assumes the aspect of a symbolic dreaming which concentrates explicitly on
the transformation of the speaker through his assimilation by and participation
in
by
the
fundamental
a South wind
104
cycles
of
nature.
Shrunk
to
the
size
of
until he falls "in cracked ground." Death,
a
seed,
he
the way
is carried
back
into
that
awakening
follow
created
ing
an
and
water,
these
upon
consequent
separate
us
reminds
partially
of
is
stages
directly
was
Eve
after
Adam's
the luxuriant blossom
and fertilization;
this imagery of sexuality
as
explained
the
integra
tion of the self, which might lead the reader to think of the "green shoot" rising
from the poet's side in Jungian fashion as the Anima, the female principle within
the male,
which
to achieve
wholeness:
to be
needs
in harmonious
balance
with
the
Animus
and
red.
in
order
The dirt will be cool, rough to your clasped skin
a man
like
never
have
you
known.
You will die into the ground
in a dead
to water.
surrendered
sleep,
You will wake suffering
a
in your side, a breach
widening pain
in
your tight ribs
gapped
where a green shoot struggles to lift itself upwards
through the tomb of your dead flesh
to the
air of your
to the
sun,
garden
where you will blossom
in the shape of your own self, thoughtless
with flowers, speaking
to bees,
"The
in the
is an
well
of green
language
and
one
archetype,
of
white
yellow,
the
gravest
of
images
human
the
soul," Bachelard writes in The Poetics of Reverie, and Hall's poem "Wells," with
its obviously quite personal significance, certainly bears out the French philoso
In this
remark.
pher's
evidence
considerable
and
domestic,
the
indicated)
to
effort
with
"The
a means
of
impasse
in
beyond
shares
also
as
bonds
with
drawal,
(as can
or
earth
fear,
and
the
tree,
in "At
must
but
rescue
be
self
lived
from
the
in
"The
ladder
may
Stump"
"Cold
the
be
and
of
or
interpreted
the head
finally
oblivion.
of
nature's
and
the
the
of
gone
"Wells"
efflores
re-established
impression
as
both
of
sexual,
situation
and
imagery
the
self
create
a
(indeed,
through,
stultification
once
at
is
there
Water,"
are
endured,
"Digging"
a new
flowering
stanzas
The
initial
impotence;
partially,
the
implications
circumvented
be
and
Stump"
expressing
the world.
and
Thirty-Five"
dilemmas?the
cannot
spiritual?which
seems
cence
as
poem,
of
private
of with
a
musk-ox
phallus
and
the boat in "The Long River," for example) and as the way of ascent from the
self's isolation, of communication with external reality and the being of others:
I lived in a dry well
under
the
rank
grass
of a meadow.
A white ladder leaned out of it
but I was afraid of the sounds
of animals
105
Criticism
grazing.
in the
arrives
it comes,
when
Help,
form
sexual
of
and
love
it a blos
with
brings
a revived fertility which draws the speaker out of his solitude
soming of life,
into new relationships; he has found a well of sustaining waters that is not his
alone:
ten years
I crouched by the wall
until
over
a woman's
of
circle
the
moved
mine
darkness
a mouth.
like
The ladder broke out in leaves
and fruit hung from the branches.
to the meadow
I climbed
grass.
I drink from the well of cattle.
(It
to view
possible
or
in a domestic
is also
trapment
but
sterile,
which
from
in
the well
sexual
the
its
first
relationship
hesitates
speaker
to
an
as
appearance
has
which
become
another
until
escape
en
of
image
deteriorated,
affection
frees him.)
are the concluding poems in A
"At Thirty-Five"
and "Cold Water"
sense
of
make
the
and
of Tiger Lilies;
they
poet's inner drama, the prob
Roof
lems
come
must
he
to
or
fective
psychic
his
is no
resemblance
close
we
filled
violent,
overtones
with
of
sexual
sequence,
of af
expressive
them.
between
"At
With
life confronting his own dark
of death; the imagery is harsh
find Hall in the middle
of his
Thirty-Five"
wood of failures and losses, as well as the prospect
and
in
read
when
life,
private
for the fact that they are both
there
states,
in
with
grips
though on the surface, except
and
misdirection,
frustration,
final
destruction:
At the edge of the city the pickerel
who has lost his way
and
vomits
with
My
dies.
its white
river
The
hair
staggers
to the
sea.
life lay open like a smashed car.
or progression of this poem depends upon
The movement
lightning-like flashes
of thought and imagery, sudden jumps in association; it is the kind of poem, as
Hall says in a recent essay (Michigan Quarterly Review, Fall 1969), that gives
us "the expression without
the song," where
song is taken to signify "the old
of
baggage
so can
logic
be
grow
ignored.
out of
of feeling." We
recalling
ment,
"The
them
its
content
ostensible
a
As
each
result,
other
Alligator
The
as we
look
by
Bride,"
next
at
story
association,
this
set
is never
says,
free
and
from
poems
poem,
which
(Hall's
term),
and "Swan."
true
the
move
in
its
loose,
by
constitutes
and ruin of a domestic
a
or
an
inward
but
shift
and
from
track
it is worth
associative
later
anticipates
content"
narrative
realistic
in Hall's work,
such qualities
"Apples,"
of "At Thirty-Five"
phase
speak, first into the decline
106
"images
have already noted
"anti-narrative"
as Eliot
which,
pieces
arrange
as
such
backwards,
or amatory
relationship,
so
to
then
further back into images of past family life, all linked with the death and decay
of relationships and households;
finally, as in the instances of the destroyed auto
above,
a
serves
line
single
to
both
summarize
and
the
punctuate
por
preceding
tion of the poem. If we are puzzled by the interposed, separate lines with their
image of a Boeing 707 airliner submerged in the sea yet oddly "intact" after its
crash, Hall remarks in his BBC broadcast comments that an image similar to
this was so obsessive with him at one time in his life he believed
it to be the
an
of
memory
way,
usually
stance
the
actual
having
He
with
that
she
to
the
in
barred,
ivy,
of
crashed
In
other."
woman
whose
of
the
her
and
agonies
any
airplanes
in
the present
countenance
stanza
opening
of
I
suggest,
setting
disruptions:
stone.
square
Lines gather at her mouth
or
anonymous
the
nightmare
survived
all,
full
poetry's
somehow
and calm of the plane's
the lucidity
after
has,
Windows
like
"My
women
metamorphoses
this stage of the poem;
believe,
adds:
refers
clearly
plane
hideous
undergoes
scene.
to do
and eyes
in a membrane.
cracks
I watch, eyeballs and tongue
on the tiled floor
spill
in a puddle of yolks and whites.
While
The intact 707
under
the
clear
the
wave,
sun
shining.
The playhouse of my
grandfather's mother
stands north of the shed; spiders
and the dolls' teacups of dead ruin.
In Ohio the K-Mart shrugs;
it knows it is going to die.
A stone, the closed eye of the dirt.
We
house
(so
imagery
streets
then
closely
implies,
"before
to discover
proceed
identified
with
and
since
particularly
freed
resurrected
from
above
that,
the
as
confines
the
vision
of
walking
are
still
his
the
per
possibilities,
to an ambiv
though the images point
houses
of
concentrated
of the other),
a
unexpectedly
of broken bonds,
the
poet
woman
is the collapse
receiving
haps even of the patching
alence,
of one
the collapse
dawn"
the
the
as
designated
"wrecks":
A door clicked; a light opened.
Houses sailed up
like wrecks from the bottom of the sea.
on
Musing
the
nature
of
dreams?of
which
this
vision
of
restored
houses
is per
haps one?he reminds himself that lechery, greed, and vulgarity must be counted
parts of the world even "if the world is a dream"; and this chain of thought
forces
an
abrupt,
stark
view
and sexual companionship,
107
Criticism
of
the
living
existence
of
the
single
in a terrible futility
man,
deprived
and isolation
of
love
comparable
to
situation
the
magnified
here
are
There
his
of
broken
of
The
stanza's
this
imagine
a single
follows his stanza with
in
this
direction
has
is
importance
condition
barren
as
line, indi
reached
termina
oilcans
shirts
their
in tin cans.
nails
collect
The
under stitches,
until the cloth disappears
who
poet
stitch
who
doors,
can
thinking
bachelors
poor
in shacks made
live
and
course
the
"Wells."
of
the
that
future. Again, Hall
that
who
outset
the
realize
his own potential
cating
tion :
at
evoked
we
once
is exhausted.
wind
The poem has moved into a dead-end passage where hope and strength
(the collecting of nails in cans is surely an image
appear to be utterly abolished
of complete sexual futility and despair); only some surge of vitality, a marked
in the
change
have
discerned
reverses
the
as
the
salvage
revivification
this
and
desperation,
the dying
and
pickerel
awakens
poet
can
life
poetry,
negativism,
lost route of
come,
of
perspective
in Hall's
from
the
the
True
poet.
does
to
occur,
deathward
horrendous
dreams
of
of
the
The
first.
the sea be
towards
recent
his
we
patterns
last stanza
the
leaning
the river staggering
the
for
a visi
past,
ble path of his destiny on which he can proceed, aided by the surprising sur
realist vehicle of the trolley car that carries him rapidly to the forest of "new
pine" where another life awaits him (in "The Dump" from The Alligator Bride
a similar
trolley leads to a colony of old men like the bachelors above):
In the middle of the road of my
I wake walking in a field.
A
car
trolley
comes
out
of
the
life
elms,
the tracks laid down through an acre of wheat
slanting downhill. I board it,
cross
and
its very
From
tinuation
poet
turn
the
field
into
new
the
"Cold
opening,
pine.
Water"
its setting
with
of "At Thirty-Five,"
in its
is a poem
that
two
the
stanzas,
closing
It
disappears.
it takes
in
stubble,
be
may
as
read
details,
early
is devoted
as well
to
a
elders
we
in the work,
ford,
nificance
poetic
or
and
have
realizations
so often
and
in Hall's
beyond
Kinnell,
natural
that
is, but
details,
become
themselves,
do
so
decisions
poems,
Louis
say, of James Wright,
Galway
context,
the
seen
their
however,
Simpson, W.
objects,
expressive
unobtrusively.
or
or
In
as
search
"Cold Water"
beginnings. Unlike its immediate predecessor,
narrative
broken
line,
only by the sudden
straightforward
Iroquois
As
poet.
a deliberate
the forest of pine
con
into which
in
the
the
startling
abandoned
for
follows
a
appearance
perfectly
of the
in
generates
coming
and can observe
equally
S. Merwin, William
gestures
in
terms
the
Staf
a
accumulate
symbolic
instance
this
the
of
sig
their
"dammed
stream," the shoe full of "cold water," the 'shade/of a thicket, a black pool,/a
the structure of
small circle of stunned drowsing air," when
looked at within
108
the
entire
seem
poem,
thematically
necessary
That
proposed
layer of the poet's
deep
in
obvious
the
stanzas
third
the
find
kind
of
ourselves
where
more
engaged
the
ritual
initiatory
a literal landscape
than with
thought
and
second
in
stages
we
there.
becomes
act
imagined
process
some
with
of
rather
turns
fishing
real:
suddenly
a
I
around
step
in the mess
of bushes
gate
and trickle of a dammed stream
and my shoe fills with cold water.
enter
I
shade
the
of a thicket, a black pool,
a small
circle
stunned
of
air,
drowsing
vaulted with birch which meets
as if smoke
rose
into
turned
up and
on the roots
I stand
of
overhead
leaves.
a
maple
and imagine
a line. My wrist jumps
dropping
with the pain of a live mouth hooked deep,
and I stare, and watch where
the lithe stripe
tears water.
Then
on
it heaves
hand:
my
While
symbolic
and
a dead
cool
it would
of
properties
mously
the
suggestive,
flesh
Trout.
The pine forests I walked
darken
cold,
revenant
flecked,
squaretailed,
of a Brook
through
farmer's
a mistake,
be
brook.
I
particulars
in view
of what
especially
insist
to
think,
in
various
these
too
stanzas,
the
enor
they
to come.
is yet
The
dammed
river,
the black
of course,
which,
pool,
waters
in Hall's
and
the
work,
of the soaked
shoe,
experience
unpleasant
the other
and
evokes
subterranean
wells,
pools,
of lassitude
and
the
combine
stagnation
atmosphere
surrounding
pool
an
to the
withdrawal
the
of
of
of
impression
vicinity
origins,
beginnings
a cul de sac,
a
at first
it may
to
be
of
stultification.
appear
though
place
we
on
strenuously
still remain
create
to
existence,
But
if
that at the finish of "At Thirty-Five"
the poet went off into the
to begin his life anew, then the situation described above
forest, presumably
can
remember
be
starting
cedes
as
understood
of
point
self's
the
as
poems
Frost's
109
of
a
and
purification
"Directive"
cathedral,
Criticism
regression
self-transformation;
too, the forest clearing
acter
the
and
in Hall's
but
not
required
sort
this
integration
Roethke's
if an
individual
to
backwards
journey
instances
recalls
familiar
"The
Lost
rendering has something
a man-made
is
of
one,
a
Son."
reach
which
in
Strangely
the
pre
such
enough,
of the shape and char
cathedral
formed
by
nature
("vaulted with birch which meets overhead") and thus the appropriate location
for the consecration of the self to its true destiny.
The imagined gesture of casting a line which quickly and enigmatically
a fish can
turns into the
perhaps best be comprehended
physical act of catching
as the initiatory movement by the poet that breaks the
spell of torpor dominating
this effort
the forest clearing and, more pointedly, his inner being. Certainly,
success
its
and
quirement,
to
ships,
calls
the
forth
the poet has
the
heart
of
"the
elders;
so
led by
a
to
a
satisfied
having
to be
and
mystery,"
or defeat
ties of achievement
Indian
readied himself
them,
the
of
confrontation
in the struggle to win
re
preliminary
in spite of hard
possibili
rebirth:
I look up and see the Iroquois
coming back
standing among the birches
on the other side of the black
pool.
The five elders
come
have
I am
for me,
young,
my naked body whitens with
in the
blisters
snow,
cold
in the bare
sun,
the ice cuts
the
me,
I am
the mystery.
for
ready
:
of blackberries
thorns
I follow them
over
the
We
ask
may
are dead or born
again.
as
cance,
means
the
Hall
why
a boy
introduces
which
needles
speechless
of pines which
for
an
chooses
American
into men's
tribal activities
presenting
aspects
own
his
of
initiation
Indian
and
ritual,
their religious
signifi
A
procedures.
psychic
primary answer would probably be that he did not choose it in the sense of a
rationally calculated selection, but that such images originally came unbidden
and
a
recommended
further
themselves
answer
from
Hall's
for
their
imaginative
on
two
comment
can
We
implications.
from
passages
poems
by
obtain
Robert
Bly and Louis Simpson in the introduction to his Contemporary American Poet
ry; he could as easily be talking of his own poem as of theirs when he says,
"This new imagination reveals through images a subjective life which is general,
and which corresponds to an old objective life of shared experience and knowl
and religious attitude towards life, which was once (with
edge." The mythic
Christians
Indians and medieval
alike) a common property of the outward
existence
been
of
urbanization,
with
110
conviction
and
community,
had
thus
from the external world
and
and reflects
vanquished,
unconscious
and
the
abolished
instead
mind
nature
the fundamental
it goes
and dream
as a result
of
underground
life. The
these
of
man
since
but
agnosticism;
widespread
an
of Hall's
conclusion
of
trial
and
by
this
the self
to become
images
as
its members
all
of modern
technology,
attitude
it cannot
active
has
participants,
science,
part
corresponds
be
of
completely
a
person's
poem
acquires
strength
can
for we
rite of
passage,
in an inner way, with
feel that he is engaged,
not
his
merely
in all times
alone
and
a
but
central
a progression
the
of
feature
larger
is
of the self which
life
shared
humans
by
places.
The twenty-five recent poems gathered in The Alligator Bride continue
in the vein of the work we have examined in A Roof of Tiger Lilies; indeed, as
we
charged
Blue
certain
expect,
with
might
are
for
Wing,"
and
themes
meaning
links
the
personal
example,
imaginative
for Hall,
because
preoccupations,
declare
themselves
with
relationship
women
they
"The
again.
the crash
to
a
of
the final stanza with its wreckage
and residue of bones implies a
plane;
is
which
the
survived
symbolic dying
through
parabolic arc of death and re
birth the last three lines describe:
and
The tiny skeleton inside
the
remembers
of
falter
the
engines,
cry without
answer, the long dying
into
out
and
Similarly,
men,
terminates
narrow
"in
and "The Train," using
of movement
poems
tioned previously,
old
sea.
the
"The Dump"
are
railways,
of
sombrely
full
houses
from
away
of
the imagery of trolley
the
past.
in a "graveyard
this
rugs,/in
last
The
first
of
lines and
men
these,
of trolleys," populated
where
place,"
by
obvi
quite
ously they wither into death. In "The Train" memory presents itself as "a long
with voices, hunger/of
dead trees, angels"
shape/of darkness, tunnel/huddled
from which a train emerges gliding off into the distance; a woman's head and
less
arm,
growing
farewell:
and
less
curves
train
The
extend
discernible,
from
a window
in
of
gestures
tightening
the light hair to itself
and diminishes
on
the
a
into memory,
trees.
of dead
renewal
thematic
tinct
down
Sunday
morning
track forever,
the
tunnel
the
Death,
metamorphosis,
or ascent
into a fresh,
concerns
extension
of most
of
the
abolition
new
of Hall's
preceding
or
of
escape
dimension
unknown
hitherto
work,
poems,
sometimes
so
that
from
of
they
the
being
constitute
it
overlapping
past,
form
a
but
and
the
dis
also
breaking into further territories. Close in feeling to the poems of departure, di
vision, and the death of relationships which entails the abandonment of a whole
is
life
of
segment
static
into
situations,
the
negative
terrible
continuation
in
their
desolation
of
these
and
experiences
lack
of
of
promise
severance
for
any
future, and so for any hope of fulfilling the poet's sense of self-identity and des
lives qualifies as a poem of this
tiny. "The Dump" with its crowd of wasted
as well as a poem of escape from the past; in effect, it is a record of failed
type
111
Criticism
deliverance.
even
bodily,
and
stone,
the
her
from
figures of "Make Up,"
The
their
erotic
whole
but
cloth";
she has missed
short
the
remains
the
originally
from
away
end.
of
image
in details
depicted
The
living
woman
a man
suited
and
harden
of
recalling
into
"Ghost/
"Sew"
stitches
busily
ideals
and
to her
in her
life, "until it stands up like a person/made
stanza,
closing
solitary,
the
by
spoken
he is. Frustrated
knowing what
he
existence,
an
it with
fashion endows
myopic
at
stone/daughter"
of scraps"
"church
drift
natures,
reveals
poet,
far
how
from rising into the amplitude
if unharmed,
neglected
out of
the
among
untested
of
pos
sibilities of his dreams:
Still, I lie folded
on the bolt in the dark warehouse,
my
dreaming
Like
Roethke's
shapes.
and
"Dolor"
Karl
"Office
Shapiro's
on
focuses
the
in
ciency,
emotional
this
to Hall's
nals,
slightly
in
these
of
with
mood,
public
as
The
a uniform
he acknowledges
of
Bourgeois
waste
and
Shapes"
technical
modern
sanitation.
appears
awareness
the
poems,
The
from
spirit, "The Repeated
associates
shiny
emptiness
hallucinated
eye,
in his own despairing
with whom,
elsewhere
the
case,
Hall
depression
..."
love
Poet, poems of the same bleak but oddly humorous
row
line-up
of old
uri
men
ties; here,
family
is
futility
effi
of
as
over
nearly
whelming:
are
They
uncles,
my
these old men
who are only plumbing,
who throb with tears all night
and
in the
doze
a
On
note
of
morning.
historical
the
authenticity
smashed
returns
airplane
in
"The Man in the Dead Machine,"
this time as a Grumman Hellcat fighter plane
"High on a slope in New Guinea," where its pilot brought it to rest undiscovered
"among
Wing"
title
bright
seem
and
vines/as
plainly
and
to "the helmeted/skeleton"
later.
as we
Then,
completes
the
have
in a
poem
arms."
a woman,
of
a man's,
details,
as
thick
those
Hall
these
devotes
had
occasion
stanza
that
to note
changes
Or say that the shrapnel
missed him, he flew
to the
morning
hands
on
carrier,
and
every
takes his chair, his pale
the black
upright, held
by the firm webbing.
112
are,
an
course,
entire
arms,
and
sits
in
remains
human
of
still strapped rigidly upright
the pilot and his fate quite different meanings:
back
the
While
stanza
as
of
close
in the pilot's
before,
the
direction
and
"The
indicated
by
Blue
both
description
seat decades
without
poet
on the
casts
warning
figure
of
The
first
two-thirds
from
reportage
is observed;
but with
of
strous
ritual
been
has
than
one
but
Not
beyond.
help
the manner
in which
only
by
compounded
through death:
feel
for
the
In
this
of
The
a mon
habitual
ways,
living
while
this
gear,
fate
the
last
of
pilot
life
waits
itself
poem
graphic
is
im
printed
suc
the self has
piece
a maddened
of
horror
inani
of
instead,
its
frighteningly
"The
Corner,"
of the
revelation
the
condition
can.
of a daily
realm
some
in
a death,
most
the
figures;
of
that,
despair,
Machine."
a human
the concluding
structure
the
Hall's
to
in
longer
skeletal
opening,
endures
poem's
each
day
self-torment,
imprisonment,
in the Dead
after
"The Man
mediately
and
descended
to anonymity
cumbed
in
by
but
of
piece
of what
and the assertion
no
and
surprisingly,
utter
and
of
but
matter-of-fact
grim,
account
unvarnished
the
are
airplanes
confined
the
of
live
we
cannot
reader
really
. . . elsewhere,
a
simply
provides
no issue but
death,
existence,
the
not
does
of
fallen
like
The
disclosed.
is far worse
stanza
sort
objects
inner
of
be
the reversal of actual death
another
external
poem
can
there
reenactment
mate
the
of
which
animal,
situation
the
impossibility
is
even
of relief,
It does not know
its name.
in a
It sits
corner,
damp
spit hanging
its chin,
from
puddled
hairless,
Huge,
grunting,
it plays with
itself,
stares
sleeps,
of urine
odor
around.
for hours,
and leaps
to smash
the
the wall.
falling back
bloody,
Limping,
into
on
itself
it
corner,
will not die.
"The
Alligator
elements
of
manifest
weaves
Bride"
guilt,
more
of
group
completely
characters
which
BBC
Hall's
speaker.
shares
with
separation,
the
fabric
of
a
includes
notes
how
disclose
the
an
irrational
sinister
the
we
poems
destructive
cat,
poem
have
been
and
energy,
or
surrealist
the
bride
as
began
death,
discussing
but
fable,
a
and
herself,
the
had
he
"fragments"
it
with
down which finally were drawn together by the introduction of "the
strange figure of a dead stuffed alligator in a bride costume," and it developed
written
it became
until
his
own
he
says,
The
you
life.
and
the
yourself
That
is,
Criticism
little
of
Knowledge
story,
leave
everyone.
113
"a macabre
his
story,"
biography
are
characters,
open
it has
to
the
as he
containing,
is not,
there,
and
the
language
same
sort
realizes,
of
however,
of
of
the
story
dreams,
general
materials
from
for,
importance;
is one
that,
is available
availability
if
to
that
a
as
story like Beauty and the Beast has. You have to listen to a poem
like this, or read it, as if you were dreaming but keeping your eyes
wide
may
the
same
time
With
poem
The
this advice
own
its
terms
lines
initial
anything
to
have
you
in
the
stay
two
first
on my
the beard
stanzas
these
Perhaps
of
range
connected
are
can try to
approach
a
by
that leads toward intimacy
the moment
of
turns
linking of temporal
white.
"eats
who
cat,
a domestic
creates
Hall
begin
his
sparrows
cat
the
is
an
losing
a
scene,
generous
enigmatic
re
the win
outside"
through the latter's seemingly
communion
their
with
preoccupation
down.
clock
respectively
and
speaker
the
the
it establishes.
allusiveness
of mortality:
lines
between
at
but
the
stanzas
awareness
constant
his
Now
lationship
to
in mind we
within
The clock of my days winds
dow,
detail.
every
You
inquisitive.
on
it.
At
float
is more
this
be
have
you
poem,
receive
and admonition
and
the
of
with
perceptions
the
musn't
you
of time, thus reminding us of the poet's obsessive
the passage
In
but
alert,
than any other kind of poem.
demanding
on
to be
have
You
open.
not
translate
impulse;
she
object
:
cherishes
Once, she brought me a small rabbit
which we devoured together, under
the Empire Table
while the men shrieked
the
repossessing
cannot
We
reasons
vious
of
and
comfort
who
in
event,
time
and
can
in
the
significance
and
gold
It appears
to be
it is
it are
the
disrupts
the
only over her
poem
child's
security.
image
Now
existence.
he
(though
the
of
its value:
"repossessing"
this action
where
stanza,
much
gauge
for
refer
of
to her
stanza,
a
presumably
commerce
the
the
lost umbrella
next
umbrella.
gold
cat,
as
of
claiming
between
snowy-bearded
to all
appearances
"My
cat"),
from
eyes. Her
at minister
laughs
114
beyond
hence
shade,
as well
by
once
what
grotesque,
mocking
the holes
stuck-open
and
people.
mouth
the
was
and
speaker
clock
indicates
continues
Ah, the tiny fine white
teeth! The Bride, propped on her tail
inwhite lace
stares
umbrella
figure
the most
that
in
a
do
In
the
rapid
the
Bride, who
would
men
anonymous
theirs.
cat
ob
a circle
perhaps
from
estranged
in a
despondent
but for love of the Alligator
nightmare:
of her
this
provides
valued
any
second
flow
of
speaker
not
state,
enters
credit
the
to
a
as
direction
as
a
Following
Bride?assembled
and
the
source
the
in which
malice,
This
Bride.
as
speaker
voluntary
or
a
swift
focal
point
a disclosure
begins
cat
the
change
interest
of
of
and
his
own
her
love
of
as
complicity?apparently
shows
destroy
its
includes
also
comes
there
only in the death of the Alli
release and termination
to harm
will
wine?which
speaker
The
a
enjoys
shifts into hatred?finding
gator
the
events.
subsequent
the cat
and
festivities,
wedding
towards
turns
poem
of
food
of
catalogue
for the
in
itself
two
of
images
dif
very
ferent artificial products of a highly technical age:
The color of bubble gum,
the consistency
of
petroleum
oozes
wickedness
jelly,
from the palm of my left hand.
My cat licks it.
I watch the Alligator Bride.
And
stanza
the
of imagery,
sealed
we observed
mas
in
in
Eve
seem
speaker,
associated
"unable
to
In
the
imprisoned
of
powers
similar
with
The
learn
and
exclusion
details
inert houses
odd,
we
as well
instance
from
the
closing
the world
of
the
The
those
and
"Christ
restrictive
that "hold themselves
imagination.
makes
sufficiently
then,
daydream,"
off
class living in the early poem
on
pressures
in this manner
unendurable
the
present
like shabby boulders"
to be
with
to
the
ville."
exert
refuse
house
speaker's
same
confinement
criticism of middle
in Hall's
applied.
the
these?suggest
Whitney
starts
fashion,
puzzling
they are more widely
"gelatin"?and
tions of "Big houses
tin"
own
its
now
though
together
is one of
stanza
in
after,
condi
in gela
tight
inhabitants
who,
like
a
freedom
which
desire
speaker's
obvious
declaration
how
that
the
is
is
he
the
claustrophobic
we add what should here be plain:
atmosphere of this life has become. Need
that the cause of this decidedly unpleasant condition is the Alligator Bride, or
better perhaps, that it results from the relationship between
the Bride and the
who
speaker,
circumstances
aftermath
brings
sky
the
all,
to
leads
which
The
after
is,
the
no
is a gun
climax
inability
of
the
relief:
particular
aimed
The
Groom.
violent
at me.
I pull the trigger.
The skull of my promises
leans
with
in a black
closet,
gapes
its good mouth
for a teat
to suck.
A bird flies back and forth
inmy house that is covered by gelatin
and the cat leaps at it
missing. Under the Empire Table
the Alligator Bride
lies in her bridal shroud.
My left hand
leaks
115
on
Criticism
the Chinese
carpet.
to
"daydream"
to
and
poem
under
the
these
unsettling
However
of his
pect
end
be
not,
taken
as
see
a
dream
the
prey,
air
The
impression
of cat, Bride,
the
of
speaker
course
impulsive
the
except
release
posed,
of
in
effective
has
violent
resonances
its
left
energy.
and
damages
The
poem
intricate drama of relationships which
fact
the
be,
endlessly
trio
is cov
speaker's
achievements,
carefully
is
satisfying
detail,
final
the
that
"house
might
a
carpet.
any
that
satisfactory
itself,
of
proves
no
but
and
irresolution;
problems
its use
whose
the
or
of
pursuit
"wickedness"
to stain the exotic
incorporate
in the
latter's
imprisoned
poem's
even
might
Christie
Agatha
in vain
cat
and
also
The
which
speaker,
guilty
the underlying
action
of
must
remain
ered by gelatin." Whatever
the
bewilderment
of
conclusion
poem's
and
ravenous
compre
or some as
the Bride.
setting
in some
scene
thoughts,
readily
himself,
a
in
like an open wound
is one
can
murdered
but
the
and
Bride,
has
he
discover
flows
situation
this
of
we
the
of
corpse
(with sexual suggestion?)
that
liberated;
a murder
of
parody
novel
detective
time
him
difficult
that their
of motives,
we
occurrences),
the trigger has destroyed
same
the
however,
Queen
Ellery
new
at
existence,
does
mass
inextricable
ordinary
in pulling
the speaker
hend how
more
and
be,
may
(and it is in this very respect
the
reflects
closely
in much
events
these
distressing
of certainty
any degree
irrationality
involved
riddling
acts
and
and
confusing
to unravel with
and
subtly
and
stages
com
an
to the reader's
engaging
imagination.
"Swan,"
narrative
and
more
to
disjunct,
the
latter
than
tive
ways,
wards
Alligator
less
of what
in
though
be
could
these
addition,
associations
their
through
"The
of
and
of
recovery
existence
in
needs
longer
return
shape
be lost:
in
The
last
his
the mountain;
incidents
of
grandparents'
its form
a
termed
three
dream,
are
apt
of
"story"
in
poems
point
the world
of
with
fantasy,
to seem
sort
any
affirma
nature,
to
in certain love
at least momentarily,
in Middle Age," and "Gold." Two
an
farm
has
and
essential
"Mount
been
mention
deserve
farm
Hampshire
distinctive
it as
lines
of
elements
the
Kearsarge,"
New
the
accomplish,
which
confirms
present.
on
to live
of
"Mount
to
to
manage
the past
the
and
Table"
them
share
Room"
Bride,"
level of life, which is gained,
such as "The Coal Fire," "Lovers
perience
spectral
cannot
"This
contains;
poem
especially
poems,
both
cause
comprise
and
a new
poems
other
"Apples,"
"The
with
of Hall's
quite
absorbed
be
ex
a
ways,
the
poet's
no
that Hall
moving
of
ingredient
reveal
Kearsarge"
aware
to be
here
youthful
of
the
in consciousness
haunting
and
I will not rock on this porch
when I am old. I turn my back on you,
I close
Kearsarge,
my
and
eyes,
you
rise
inside
me,
blue ghost.
entire poem on recollections
Similarly, in "The Table" Hall spends almost the
on
and
each detail is lovingly re
the
shared
his
with
of days
farm,
grandfather
called;
the
farm
the
finish
house.
of
In
the
an
poem,
instant
he knew and is now past,
116
however,
of
strange,
the life which
is in
the
Proustian
where
present,
communication
the previous
the
revisits
poet
the life which
part of the poem has re
created,
comes
familiar
bedroom
and
horse
the
changed;
a
time
was
that
lived
and
to
felt
extent
fullest
the
the
dead
un
it mysteri
in which
of this old piece of furniture,
the agency
in
table
grandfather's
but
existing
gone
long
landscape,
a
touches
his
of
perception
startling
summer
humming
as he
senses
and
a
receives
busy,
through
resides,
ously
rected
to his mind
alive
suddenly
and
has
resur
been
in the
poet:
This
I walk
on
morning
to the shaded bedroom
the
and lean
table.
drop-leaf
The table hums
a song to itself without sense
and I hear the voice of the heaving
ribs of Riley
and grasshoppers
haying the fields of the air.
Divided
scenes
into
events
and
man
between
and
the
or dissolution
sence
ties with many
At
another
a
is winter,
it
from A Roof of Tiger Lilies discussed
season's
as
afternoon,
darkening
a fire in the fields burning
observes
Hill,"
of
of Hall's pieces
outset
the
on
concentrated
sections,
separate
though
apparently
one
"Swan"
area,
explores
geographical
relationships
or nature's
hidden
earth
it also
renders
the ab
energies;
In its theme,
such
has
the
close
then,
poem
relationships.
five
within
the
poet,
the stubble
off
previously.
"Mill
climbing
in preparation
for
planting:
Smoke blows
from the orange edges of fire
the wheat
working
stubble.
"Putting
the goodness back
into
These
details
it
an
five;
of
ing
ever
or
is almost
sense
of
117
in the
Criticism
natural
realm.
inward
vision,
currents
at
setting
and
cycles,
here.
Such
its
realities
this poem
we
once
so of
for
to
precedent
an
individual
as
in
sections
as
in
three;
part
as in
part
lends
its
a
four.
mingl
What
in one
and
freely
to
of
powers
to earth
toward his own physical
and
two,
or
mentioned,
itself
whole
experience,
preparations
regenerative
that proximity
the
one,
experience,
have
them to move
by allowing
the
enduring
through
the
devoted
observation,
thematic
contributes
fundamental,
lead Hall
set
and
is
quite
specific
description,
moments
these
distinct
of
them together
man
to which
in a person
and
above
passage
in its entirety,
of
the
of nature
discovery
among
the
touches
draw
In
fertility
the
feeling
length,
immediate
exist
each
mind.
varying
pure,
section
first
perceivings
into
memory
differences
another
the
of
amalgam
desire
and
reader must
his
soil."
complete
of
part,
each
poem:
whether
the
way
the
in
together
a
for
capacious
renewed
and
nature,
can
arouse
contact
and
account
The
of
a
incident,
separate
and
section
second
the
constitutes
one
contains
in
and dramatic
strange
of the two
specific
character,
to
references
:
gives the poem its title
the bird which
Driving; the fog
matted around the headlights;
suddenly, a thudding
white
in the whiteness,
shape
running huge and frightened,
The
inconclusively.
Symbolist
dust
desirous
entire
the
recalls
passage
streets
of
us
give
azure
stanza
the
swans
in exile
from its cage and bathing
in Baudelaire's
infinite
the
and
experience,
two
famous
perhaps
the swan escaped
poetry:
Parisian
of
but
lines
these
Seemingly,
lost
. . .
stream
its slow
from
and
"Le
of
Cygne"
in Mallarm?'s
skies
the
its wings
swan
the
trails
off
in French
in the
in
trapped
"Le
vierge,
sonnet
ice
le
et le bel aujourd'hui." In both poems the bird is, to one degree or an
I do
emblematic
of the poet tormented by exile and unfulfillment. While
other,
not wish to imply that Hall had these previous poetic instances in mind, he cer
tainly knows the poems in question, and the present passage may be illuminated
somewhat by recalling them. Here, too, it is difficult not to view the significance
of the incident, the sudden appearance of a swan out of the thick fog?in which
the poet must likewise find it troublesome to make his way?and
the details se
lected to describe it ("running huge and frightened,
lost/from its slow stream
vivace
as
..."),
be
somehow
one
called
uprootedness,
a kind
in movement,
ways
the
open
to
related
of
still
possibilities
the
of
own
poet's
for he
is
wanderer.
available
for
a condition
condition,
portrayed
throughout
The
stanza's
indecisive
swan
the
to discover
stream; and the poet is left, like the bird, to maneuver
an
toward
fog
the
seen
with
harmony
or dream;
in reverie
den
forces
"dark"
of
earlier
Beneath
tying
of
the
on which
poems
the mill,
nature's
an
like
subterranean
it draws
also
the
as
world,
a
associated
network
source
with
of
of
particulars
The
energies.
nature
it channels
forces
it
the
taps
the
or
the
quest
the
waters
covert
embraces
world,
as
if
hid
The
process.
and
origins
the
for an
appears
lifts
the
and
black
and
imagery
mill
in
them
transforming
recollects
again
primal
"tunnels"
to
of the poem but holds
and
of
leaves
ending
back
image a focus of the poet's
agency
only
al
unknown?destination.
yet
rhythms
as
as best he can through the
important
together
in its use of the windmill
in
existence
as
probably
as well,
center
thematic
providing
unspecified?and
can
poem
route
the
third section not only stands in the middle
The
that
the
of
pools
life.
reach
ing "to the poles/and down to the center of the earth"; and so this queer edifice
seems almost a temple of natural
religion through the activity of which great
chthonic
powers
achieve
release.
The
next
stanza,
to the fire of section one, only then to disclose
Fire breaks out in the fields.
The wheel of the mill does not turn,
118
of
merely
the mill
halted
two
lines,
returns
in its operations:
sterility of winter is implied here, for the fire in the initial stanza
the mill,
by the poet in December
burning "the wheat/stubble";
The
was witnessed
too, must
remain
idle
section
the
unexpectedly,
this
during
closes
with
Now
period.
a
startling
the
fog
of
flourish
as well,
reappears
surrealist
and
images:
The windmill
flies,
its
clattering
to the
wings,
huge
swamp.
Imake out cliffs of the Church,
houses drifting like glaciers.
it, the swan somehow merges
though the poet does not specify
Surely,
mill
as
it
takes
not
flight?enigmatically,
towards
stream
the
a
but
the
with
It
swamp.
is
to determine all this journey may suggest, but in any event it prepares
for the desolate, frozen, infertile images of church and houses, which
natural life and energy symbolized by the windmill with the super
the
replace
naturalism or abstract theology represented by the church and, following the
in "Christmas Eve inWhitneyville"
and
pejorative connotations of the dwellings
"The Alligator Bride," the seclusion from full existence of the bourgeois. The
difficult
the way
movement
traces
section
this
of
abdication
the
of
modes
natural
their replacement by artificial and ideological ones.
The dreamlike qualities of the third part vanish
to be
section,
ence
exchanged
in
lived
for
to
proximity
the
open
poet's
earth,
sustenance
drawing
in the next
desire
an
for
a
both
of
and
being
entirely
of
declaration
of
exist
and
spiritual
a close
working relationship with the soil. He envisages
physical kind from
the daily and seasonal routines of another, ideal individual the life he wishes
himself:
in
for
I envy the man hedging and ditching,
trimming the hawthorn, burning branches
while
circle
wasps
a mile
of
clearing
like closed
the man
who
holes
in his
smokes
in the
lines
sections,
of
with what was
cliff
like
fire" may
to which
His
observed
church,
hint
the
at buried
with
marking
forms
with
nature
other
Criticism
and
air,
and ditching.
a
of
of
return
of natural
has
who
movement
restless
living
dark/by
three with
to
harmony
not
energy,
blended
with
complete
of water,
that
here
presented
is so
elements
tirely to rain and air,/stained
119
in summer
at the close of part
man,
the
to rain
feeling
the
type
anonymous
identification
sociated
the
course,
thus
nest,
in ten o'clock light,
entirely
grafted
terminate
and,
their
soot
in the winter,
pipe
stained dark
by years of hedging
These
of
cottage
his
digging his garden
the man
smoke
of
lane, patches
to a cave of fire,
that,
air,
and
his
environment,
addition
earth
years of hedging
"cave
the mill
those
to
as well:
and
houses
The
unlike
in
decisively
its glacial
creation.
with
previous
pervades
contrasts
reaches,
has
fire,
he
"grafted
and ditching."
of
access.
is
as
en
The final section, like the second, is brief and inconclusive, but where
the latter offered the desolate, helpless image of the swan lost from its stream in
the
stanza
this
fog,
The
of
swan
the
evokes
surface
close-packed
a root-bound
by
in an
affirmative
way:
roots
the
of
now
and
analogy
plant
when I break the pot away,
the edges white
and
in the transition
By some means,
the
one,
has
poet
. . .
as a swan
sleek
progressed
to this last
from the fourth part of the poem
from
the man
of
"envy"
whose
life
about
revolves
contact with the soil and what grows there to his own direct physical relation
or natural process, suggested quite plainly by his handling of
ship with nature
the plant. In thematic and symbolic terms the breaking of the pot surrounding
the
and
plant
the discovery
a moment
of
to
comparable
"the
of
rebirth
as
sleek
white/and
edges
for the
who
poet,
is,
a
as we
. .
swan
."is
linked
noticed,
to the figure of this bird. The fact that Hall refuses to complete his poem with
can only be understood
a
to reinforce the idea of potentiality which
the
period
has
experience
ously
self's
the
made
natural
broaden
the
of
form
to a volume
"This
fashion
his body,
an
on
concludes
flowers;
note
ecstatic
the
of
love
The
poetry,
is
which
Room,"
simultane
space of
and the metaphorical
of
overtones
sexual
here and also look toward
the implications
and
before
in
like
of the poet,
context,
living
cosmos
In
manifest.
the actual dwelling
acceptance
the
of
by
the
imagery
the love poems mentioned
Room
Yellow
Love
Poems,
unpub
lished at the time of this writing:
the brown stairs
Climbing
of
the
I enter
air,
I am welcomed
my
place.
of geraniums,
green
by pots
thick as a thumb,
uprushing
stems
leaves! I live
in your
sweet
exhalations,
tongued flowers!
Of the poem "Apples" Hall
it, I thought it was about old dead
were
had
poets
died
them to be. By
other
things."
all
in
a year
or
the time I'd finished
The
poem
is
says in his BBC remarks, "When I started
poets. A number of friends of mine who
so,
and
about
certainly
I wanted
to make
death,
entrance
a
up
I saw that it was
the poem,
into
place
for
really about
the
underworld
or kingdom of the dead, and the beginning of a new paradisaical form of being
which consists largely of earthly delights; but poets are not specified as partici
pants, the dead might be anybody. Though ritual elements appear in the circu
lar movement
of
the
dancers
those implied by the subjective
the
earth
together
120
itself
with
can
other
be
discerned.
particulars
at
the
end,
poem's
no
fantasy of acceptance
The
drawn
recurrent
from
and
nature,
except
by and habitation
resonant
such
intentions
religious
as
image
grapes,
of
grass,
the
within
apple,
a mari
a
and
gold,
like
feather,
peacock's
out
seek
"Swan,"
Hall
correspondence
an
this
keep
of
order
in a vision
projects
with
of
the
They have gone
into the green hill, by doors without
or lifting city
covers
manhole
with
consistent
poem
harmony
those
that
creation;
of
conditions
life
which,
pieces
kind
of
after
natural
death:
hinges,
to tunnels
lined with grass,
their
as
soft
skin
their
grapes,
faces
like
apples.
in
into
the ver
vanish
dead
who,
fashion,
fairy-tale
disappearing
as the
the
earth
of
of
renewal,
possess
aspect
passageways
already
analogy
means
the
faces
the
and
fruit
of
skin
and
between
their
By
magical
specifies.
of a
which
the "round
feather?introduced
of
transformations
eye"
peacock
sight
on the
in the second
surface
the
"curved
the
stanza?permits,
spot"
apple's
giving
a
a "fat camel"
into
and
shadow"
of
appearance
synesthetically
"fly's
changing
the dead
the
the world
"the cry of a
hard,"
poet
"looking
marigold,"
approaches,
moves
into
it
himself:
have
then
entered,
swiftly
The
dant
I am caught in the web of a gray apple,
I struggle inside
an
immense
of
apple
sand,
blowing
I blossom
conditions
through
into
for entrance
Proceeding
preparation
the unmistakable
the
dise,
ingly,
wards
but
whose
the
boundaries
apples
dance
about
are
qualities
of
those
likewise
the
reverie,
"rungs
once
is announced
hill,
poet
of
journey
this
of
precincts
the
occupy
"each man"
which
the
the
the
provided
the
by
told
seems
turbulence
and
within
of
are
with
and
underworld,
rebirth
are
stories
apples.
storm
of
pleasures
ladies"
beautiful
mysteriously,
the
analogy
its climactic
key";
of
the
of
imagery
and
activities
"Seven
poem.
a window-box
from
quietly
whose
the
participates
a
of
as
natural
para
of
the
two
last
stanzas
and
serve
him
ladder";
and,
not
more,
leading
derives
shape
peacock
cosmos
ideal
powerful
in this
necessary
is followed
the
from
by
"whis
surpris
poem
that
feather.
of
a
to
fruit
Within
his
imag
ining:
like apples brighten
Their voices
Now
with
hill of the peacock,
note
Another
"Gold."
The
two
of sexual fulfillment,
121
of
Bride, which
last
Criticism
in the wind.
dancing
fiddles and ladies and trumpets
in the
The Alligator
are
they
poems,
round
in the resounding hill.
intense
revitalization
is
struck
by
the
love
include "The Coal Fire," "Lovers in Middle
together
with
and "The Dump,"
"Waters,"
discussed
which
previously,
carries
Hall
in
poems
Age,"
oblique
and
hints
places, with
minor
of
in
changes,
and
"poems
withdrawal,
communion,
aration.
The
of
say,
they
at
and
to a
poet
self-renewal
awareness
reunion,
its
vary
sequence
a further
instances
points
one
development
of
along
it must
cannot
imagines,
poetry
these
course,
of
conclude
be
the
form
a
extraordinarily
impels the
unhappily,
destroyed
versions,
poems
an
to
in quality
in
such
route
the
of
sep
and
in
tone,
style,
a new
in Hall's
work,
that brings his art close
of
sequence
and
its
considerably
apprehend
Rexroth.
And,
though
a
Room,
complexities
its
it reveals,
rhythm
in a final
conclusion
painful
we
even
Yelloiv
affair,
and
plotting
that,
love
and
Kenneth
intimate relationship which,
a
emotion
to what
least
The
book
chronicle
in many
themselves,
among
unity
demonstrate
and fineness
poetry?or
Ezra
Pound
this
of
poems
certainly
delicacy
Chinese
of
and
new
his
of
that
fragments"
the
depths
complications,
feeling;
context
the
even
entirely
with
the final parting of the persons involved. Obviously
then, the poems from The
uses in the sequence will assume different
Hall
Bride
which
also
Alligator
impli
cations
in
becomes
accord
with
more
much
their
various
so, for example,
there;
positions
in terms
context.
its
of
changed
sexual
explicitly
"Waters"
"Gold"
noted before in "This Room" and apparent in
continues the spatial metaphors
in isolation in
The Yellow Room, but its color symbolism, effective
enough
this beautiful poem, is enlarged by the extension of that symbolism throughout
the
Yellow
In
sequence.
"Red,
we
Room,
For
discover
five
I lived
Orange,
some
of my
years
important
life,
or
This
mony,
colors
but
the
a
our
voices
were
easily
stanza
opening
second
poet
associates
orange
Red was
explanations
at
with
lunch,
the
Sometimes
of
Th?
I looked at her.
oyster-white.
us
reminds
of
provides
explicit
the woman
he
earlier
of domestic
poems
statements
of
the warm,
does
love
color
gold
of
for dinner.
pain.
no-color
years
rise
in slow motion,
on drums.
like Mozart
smile
Their
name
They
like pale grass, looking downward.
But red sticks
122
close
ten,
Now I eat red
all day. The sky is her yellow.
needles
the
:
I looked for the color yellow.
I drank yellow for breakfast,
Yellow
near
appears
no-color.
In a beige room I talked
clipped whispers
with a lady who faded while
Even
which
Yellow,"
in my
eyes.
is Chumble.
and
now
has
lost:
dishar
vibrant
dozes on the beach at Big Sur
or
in the
that
Even
its
the
share
certain
but
center
new
of my
room
a cactus
like
lives without
for a year.
water,
of
agony
rending
in a momentous
a
receives
loss
revivification
of
bright,
the self
of the past.
Undoubtedly,
phases
a
which
like
"Gold"
poem
experience
last stanza
proclaims,
inaugurate
enduring
negative
the
stunning
of the psyche
in
alterations
inner
the
life
and the emotions of both lover and beloved:
Pale gold of the walls,
the
of
and
thus
color
takes
burning
to leave
that
behind
promises
torment
and
will
recur,
despair
as
realizes
its
brief
and
must,
centers
gold
of daisies,
roses
yellow
pressing from a clear bowl. All day
we lay on the huge bed, my hand
stroking the deep
gold of your thighs and your back.
We slept and woke
the
entering
room
golden
together,
lay down in it breathing
quickly, then
slowly
again,
caressing and dozing, your hand sleepily
now.
hair
my
touching
We made in those days
tiny identical rooms inside our bodies
the men
which
uncover
who
our
graves
will find in a thousand years
shining and whole.
Without
book,
which
may
fundamental
negative
into
entering
patterns
undergo
of
are
polarities
further
considerable
and
descent
in
perceptible
poems do, find completion
await
however,
may,
out
to the
of
opening
possibilities
the remarkable
ald Hall's
career,
his abandonment
to
revision,
we
death
ascent,
these
love
explore
his
them
beyond
existence.
strides
of the supposedly
freedom
subsequent
about
an
can
and
poems.
as yet
rebirth,
also,
They
unpublished
affirm
still
that
the
and
positive
as
previous
in images of stoical suffering and harsh conditions
one
solitude;
detail
As
of
his
the
which
development
correct poetic modes
experience
of
a new
of
stage
growth,
over Don
reader
looks back
another
honestly,
follow
upon
of the 1950's and his
to
say
what
he
needed
to say in a voice tested and found to be truly his own, rather than one
imposed
from without and legislated by alien theoretical criteria, become quite evident.
From A Roof of Tiger Lilies through The Yellow Room his work displays that
which has se
high level of imaginative power and technical accomplishment
cured
123
him
an
enviable
Criticism
place
among
the American
poets
of his
generation.