Page Four
THE MICHIGAN DAIL)
)undoy, Januory I r to
Page Four THE MICHIGAN DAIL'~ ~unday, January L~, 1YI~
DON'T MISS THIS!
BOOKS
Donal Hall's The Town ofHil
ranoving images come
ave with a poet s maturation LL_____ Q y
YJWOtiAfWOk
JANUARY 6-31I
UNION GALLERY
WEEKDmYS 10-6
WEEKENDS 12-6
MICHIGAN UNION.
FiRST FLOOR
530 S. STATE ST.
ANN ARBOR MICHIGAN
764-3234
unsrs UM-IWY UNION GALLERY & RESIDENTIAL COLLEGE
FREE DINNER!
SUNDAY NIGHT-6 P.M.
For Those Interested inf
FRATERNITY LIVING
Have a Meal-Meet Some People
- r
S1GMA NU
700 OXFORD 761-3127
"A BLOCK FROM CALL FOR RIDE
THE ROCK_ or MORE INFO.
THE TOWN OF HILL by
Donald Hall, Boston: David
R. Godine, 1975
By STEVEN SCHWARTZ
r
DONALD HALL'S n e w e s t
book, The Town of Hill, is ,a
splendid addition to Godine' s
series of contemporary poetry.
It only only contains the best
of Hall's recent work but also
represents a signficant new di-
rection in Hall's career.
Donald Hall's progress as a
poet has been strange. Looking
over The Alligator Bride (the
collected poems to 1969), one
views a poet who has remade
himself and his craft. Hall
started working mainly in tra-
ditionalforms':ksonnets, rhymed
couplets, blank verse, sestina.
Hall from the beginning had a
virtuoso gift of rendering com-
plex v i s u a I experience and
movement neatly, with a mini-
mum of strain.aFor whatever
reason, he became more at-
tracted to free verse and a
poetry which owed much to
French surrealism.
However, this change did not
result in a greater range or
depth of expresison. If any-
thing, too many poems of this
period have the air of the school
exercise about them, and I find
myself wondering why Hall
wrote them at all. This indicates
to me that the poems, for all
their considerable technical ac-
complishment, fail in an im-
portant way. The ambitious
poem "The, Alligator Bride"
seems typical of the collected
work at this time. The images
are not much shaped by theI
creative will of the poet as re-
called from other surrealist
poems. Indeed, the ideas and!
attitudes throughout this par-I
ticular section of the collected
poems seem second-hand, self-
dramatizing poses rather than
beliefs passionately held-near-
bathetic apostrophes to Rilke's
Blue. One feels as if one watch-
ed in some lurid Frankenstein-
ian laboratory a row of gal-
vanized corpses - jittery with
current, but not alive.
NATURALLY, I speak of a
general impression which
can by no means be applied to
every poem in this section, and
the pieces free of s~ch an at-
mosphere are quite good indeed.
What interests meabout them
is that Hall's technique doesn't
change. The lyrics come from
recognizably the same hand
that producedt"hehAlligator
Bride." Hall has indeed mas-
tered his new craft.
The real difference, however,
lies in the subject matter. Al-
most every one of the poems in
my list is about either childhood
or Hall's New England experi-
ence. Scanning the rest of the
collected poems, one finds a
large r.umber of fine lyrics on
these themes - for example,
"The Sleeping G i a n t" and
"Elegy for Wesley Wells." He
seems kin to Wordsworth; his
career as a poet to recover and
recharge his past and his re-
gion.
I find this judgment confirm-
ed by Hall's newest book, The
Town of Hill. Most of the poems
do not specifically c o n c e r n
either New England or .child-
hood, but many of them have
roots there. For the most part,
they avoid the senseless flam-
boyance of tone that marred
The Alligator Bride. At their
best, they mark a renewal of
Hall's gift to suggest much
more than he says. One still
comes across the occasional
precious poem, but I find only
three in the whole collection
("The Presidentiad," "Mouth,"
and "Professor Gratt"). The
rest flash by with genuine ex-
I uberance or sing beautifully and
quietly. "To a Waterfowl" and
"The' Space Spiders" are point-
ed and, above all, funny satires.
"Jane at Pigall's" and "Sudden
Things" just rip along. "Fete"
is a wonderful love poem and
short enough to quote whole:
Festival lights go on
in villages throughout
the province, from Toe
Harbor, past the
Elbow Lakes, to Eyelid Hill
S when you touch me, there.
Daily Photo by STEVE KAGAN
Donald Hall
NIM"
THIS WEEK AT:
Ann Arbor's Premium
Rock and Roll Night Club
LIVE MUSIC AND DANCING
EVERY NIGHT
SUNDAY
Featuring: MASQUERADE
-PLUS-
PITCHER NIGHT
1/ PRICE on Beer All Night
MO NDAY
Featuring: HOTFOOT
.-PLUS--
TFQUILA NIGHT:
All Tequila Drinks 1/ PRICE All Night
TUESDAY
Featuring: LIGHTNIN
-PLUS-
50c DISCOUNT on All Drinks
BETWEEN 9 & 10 P.M.
THE SCHOOLS OF MUSIC, THEATRE AND DANCE
Present
LHistoire du Soldat
(A SOLDIER'S TALE)
by IGOR STRAVINSKY
A Musical Drama
Performed in English
February 6-7-8:30 P.M.
February 8-3:00 P.M.
'
i
i!,
Trueblood Auditorium
GENERAL ADMISSION $2.00
Tickets available at UAC Ticket Central located
Hill Auditorium Box Office. 764-8350
in the E
The sounds of the place
names are enchanting, but,
more importantly, the names
themselves call to mind specific
areas that almost never get
into love poems. One sees the
spaces between the toes, the
crook of the elbow, and the roll
of the eyelid. The referrant am-
biguity and the emphasis of
"there," produced by the pause
of the comma forces us to
make, suggests a new place and
the sensation of continual dis-
covery between the lovers.
Compact images of complex
movement can be found in many
of the poems. In "Poem With
One Fact" a river of rats crawl
over Detroit "to eat the crayon/
from drawings of rats."
TN THE POEMS I like best--
"T h e Little Town," "The
Raisin," "Eleanor's Letters,"
'"White Apples," and "The Town
of Hill"-Hall returns to his
past and his childhood. "White
Apples" recollects the death of
Hall's father.}
when my father had been I
dead a week
I woke
with his voice in my ear
Isat up in bed
and held my breath
and stared at the pale closed
door
white apples and the taste
of stone
if he called again
I would put on my coat
and galoshes.
..
The music is superbly con-
trolled. Near-rhymes are plenti-
ful: week / woke, bed / breath,
door/stone/again. Some of the
poem's mystery lies in the age
of the speaker. How old was he
when his father died? How old
is he now? Putting on coat and
galoshes at his father's call, sug-
gests a child. The distance im-
plicit in the opening suggests
the persona is an adult remin-
iscing. However, we do not know
when "if he called again" oc-
curs in the speaker's mind:
then; after the funeral, or now.
It's an ambiguity that hasn't
stopped humming to me since I
first read the poem.
"The Little Town" has the
tone of a folk tale. In fact, the
idea of making up stories runs
throughout the poem. Hall be-
gins by telling us about how, in
a country of "blue wildflowers,
and butterflies as blue as the
flowers they suck on," he finds
a town "as small as a pea; so
small that the breath of a fern
could blow it over." He reports
a day in the life of the town.
At night he tells himself stories
about the townspeople. One of
the stories is about their tales
and dreams. The poem ends as
a story within a story within a
story. Yet Hall's considerable
art conceals or smooths this
Chinese-box s t r u c t u r e. The
poem never rubs your nose in
cleverness. Instead it draws the
reader in deeper, closer to the
little town. While I think one
can't talk of the meaning of this
poem, it nevertheless becomes
immensely important just be-
cause it's there. I keep comingI
back to this poem, and, although
I have very little idea what the
story represents to Hall or even
to me, the poem takes an in-
creasingly stronger hold of my
affections.
~1IWL1II~
.fY- -'-;-T
U
- __ _ - . .
F _ __. _ . ____ .. ._...._ ._._._.._ . ._ T ____. ^ r
7iY OOH
"The Town of
favorite poem in
undoubtedly one
Hall has written.
Hill" is
the book
of the
pout sleep
in a green
mailbox, and
a boy walks
from a screened
porch beneath
the man-shaped
leaves of an oak
down the street looking
at the town
of Hill that water
covered forty
years ago,
and the screen
door shuts
under dream water.
The language is quiet, the
rhythm as gorgeously slow and
subtle, as one imagines the cur-
rents of deep water. Again the
real complexity of the poem
seems almost off-hand. Yet,
notice how the placement of the
boy transforms the town of Hill
to a surface town and directs
our view again under water.
Hall uses that boy to pivot not
just once, but three times:
from Hill to the surface, from
the surface back to Hill, from
Hill to the boy's "dream" of
Hill.
The poems in this collection
represent a new synthesis in
Hall's poetry. Hall finally has
found or rediscovered the things
that matter Ito him and puts his
craft to making them matter to
the reader as well. I don't know
whether the best of these
poems will last as long as the
language, but I very much want
them to.
Steven Schwartz is a faculty
member in the English depart-
-trent. -___
my
and
best
Back of the dam, under
3a flat pad
of water, church
bells ring
in the ears of lilies,
a child's swing
curls in the current
of a yard, horned
I
3
5r
i
.. m - -e . -. - m, - -
I -COUPON- 2 for 1 Special
j Buy 1 Super Salad-GI
I GOOD MONDAY,
GOURMET NATURAL FOOD RESTAURANT
1
-COUPON-
I
WEDNESDAY
Featuring: FOXX
--PLUS-
STUDENT NIGHT,
ONLY 50c Admission for Students
ET 1 FREE
JAN. 26th Only
NOT AVAILABLE FOR
CARRY OUT
Longevity Cookery Ii
314 E. Liberty I
Ann Arbor, Mich.
(313) 662-2019
Why not join the DAILY
THE DAILY IS A GREAT PLACE TO:
Smeet other good people
* drink 5c Cokes
* learn the operations of a newspaper
4 write stories
see your name in print
! earn a little money
Come on down to 420 Maynard anytime and
join the business, news, sports or photography
staffs!
"YOU'LL SWEAR
THEY'RE ALIVE"
thru
Clas*d
THURSDAY thru SATURDAY
Featuring: FOXX
C
1
Bring An Old Friend,
Make A New Friend, At:
I
( ci
UAC ETC Presents
David Syrotiaks
NATIONAL
MAD ICONTTF
Order
Your
Slhzcrinfinn
I