Sunday, October 20, 1957
THE MICHIGAN DAILY MAGAZINE
Poos N"n
'Exiles & Marriages
Hall Realizes His Responsibilities to a Demanding Art
I
EXILES AND MARRIAGES.'Poet
By Donald Hall. New York, A P e
1956: Viking Press, 118 pp. Who Ca
$3.
By R. C. GREGORY B
OCCASIONALLY there comes a
poet who writes such good He returns to the scenes and pos-
poems that nothing else matters: sessions of a boy ("A Relic of the'
Donald hall is. I think, such a poet Sea"):
and Exiles and Marriages is an I took a sea shell hone
exceptional first book. Hall has when I was nine
learned his craft to a rare degree And stuck it in a box
and he cares about his responsi- In n attic storeroom sch
bilities to a demanding art-im- n
was wholy mine.
portant aspects in the work of any e psist d mems
poet. Where I kept rusted awns,
and rocks
Hall's poems are particularly Inardink
good because he avoids the pitfalls I d
he once described: "Young poets * * *
of talent have one of two fIaws; Where do illusions conse from?
either they are afflicted with every When I was four
kind of clumsiness, and must have I thought a hill nearby
their poems weeded clear of dead A giant sleeping,
metaphors, extra feet, cliches, and whose long body bor
dishonest rhetoric; 'either that, or A layer of earth. His waking cry
they are gifted with easy com- Would mean a war.
petence and are plagued by notl
always sounding like themselves."
His tone of voice, his approach I climbed the attic staircase
to the central problem for every to enjoy
young artist-coming of age as The place again
hinmself, and his acceptance of life where I was mastert
as something to praise, not regret: Of every toy.
this is the cluster of quantities and
qualities which makes Exiles and HE TRAVELS where "The En -i
Marriages a memorable book of lish autumn pales the trees /
poems, With yellow fog" and resolves that
Hall's best poems are written ("Words From England")i:
from a mood of loving, patient ex- A
anmination of what 'ent into their Another yeat and I will be
making. Knowing that the final Returned to where
maigoan exeinemy the seasons tte,
eude hi in poetty as it lifele' Each delicate compartment
says ("A Friend Revisited"): T shut.
Then I will watch the maple treee
I do not ask for final honesty, That tells position like a star:p
Since none can say, October and Connecticut. c
"This is my motive, this is me,' H
But I will pray Hall recorded his grandmother's
Delibertion and a shaping death in the elegy "In Memory of f
choice Augusta Hall," moving for its quiet y
To make a speaking voice ldetachment that lends force to
what he has to say of his grand-
fHESE LINES recall the cool in- mother and of memory and love:
tensity and firm dedication of
the young Yeats; in expression they Men retain the image of
recall Yeats after he discov- Persons whom they wholly love,
eted ". . . more enterprise / In And until we die like hert
walking naked." For it is Yeats' For a while she will endure
rare ability at placing plain words When we die her life will be
in lines suddenly luminous that Dead to human memory,
Tall seems to admire, whose de- But her courage and her wit
mnasding art he would understand First survive her death a bit.
("A Study of History":_
He marries and tells his wife on
They live in dread titir wedding day that "Eitha-
That cherish an excess amion")
Thsere is no happsitss . ..It is by choice and form
The old man said, We build defenses
Except in understanding thints ftomte stot,
he sid Imposed upon vacuities of space.
To acquire understanding Hl Asad so we summon heroes
had first to be an exile; what he ssho must say
came to understand he returned to
marry. This intellectual and atis-
tic evolution, acutely perceived as OFFI
a matter of choices ("The World,
The Times")- 'ARM Y-NA
There's no security
There's mutchs belief
except the grave:;X
itnlstt dosmnte xist
All that is excellent
is hard to save,
Since every man FOR ALL
is partly anarchst.
We live by choice, R.O.T.C. UNITS
and choose from every act
That fom or chaos move
from mtnd to fat.
Each momentt is political.
and s's
Are clothed it nothitne
but mortality
provides the frame for his poems. Genuine calfskin Uppe
Sizes 6-12, A
A fres on/ri/>u/ortoI/ 2 Size 31
j. GIa -s .ade /__We have BLITZ CL(
'f r t i i 'es wit dr nt s / d / e r o
i orlsng |o li/e b>ok sel ionj
c'partiC o />'et erral i. 122 E.Wa
h2ay, ,5inis; Cs c)lases and reaid-
ist, irats Iic is csto/er'ary SAM J. BENJAMIN,
With H
res No
ut Abo
They aret
wedding
We in our
Will live b
So let our
and lett
And waltz
on our m
Be becosm
to his infant
First Child"
My son, m
I take y
Quiet and
And wh
fig h Human Qualities ' learning, in England that Me
grandfather had died in America:
?t Onl' About Poetry Against the clapboards
Y and the windowpanes
ut Life A s Wel/Whines the loud March
with rain and heavy wind,
In dark New Hampshire
the poem of our No. It is not uniquessess of ex- where his widow wakes.
g day, perience that makes Hall's poems She cannot sleep.
Smensorabte; rather ilis Isis way of The familiar length is gone.
* * memrabe; rthe it s hs wa of I stand alone among the
formal character seeing the "things" that have gone I English crowds
together, into making him whatever he was And think across the
heroes laugh, at any given poem of discovery. clamorous Atlantic . . .
them play, This partly accounts for the shift-
together ing conception of self, for various "An Elegy For Wesley Wells" is a
wedding day, attitudes assumed for the angle statement of values; itis immedi-
of vision they could afford and ately moving because the poet and
ess a fter and mus then discarded In Memory of his recollections are so much in
): Augusta Hall," on his grand- it, so touched by the act of evalu-
ssmother, is much more a death- ating:
ty executioner, poem than is "An Elegy for Wesley The farmer dead,
ou in my arms, Wells," and is perhaps more deeply his horse will run to fat,
small and just astir, realized as art. The second poem, He will go lame
0om my body warms. perhaps more deeply felt as ex- and whinny from his stall ..
perience, had its rise from Hall's'
See EXILES, Page 18
I take into my arms the death
Maturity exacts,
And name with my
imperfect breath
The mortal paradox.
CHILDHOOD, travel, death, mar-{
riage, and paternity are not an
unusual pattern for any man. The
intellectual development of young
American writers - those now;
about thirty - is chiefly distin-
'uished by similarity of experi-
ence. Childhood and adolescence
happened during war .College was
crowded with ex-servicemen on
both sides of lecterns who made
education peculiar for many unim-
portant sociological reasons and
chiefly because they were veterans
of almost every human experience
except the intellectual, which they
astened on with a half-scornful
yet real intensity.
Donald[ fall, a /t cat /o the
Untsit t /is ear as an assis-
ant profe sor of Inlisdt, at/end-
edi O fotrd, asirere Iri, s scs
':sit,'" ic sits Is' Arts"'iltla t'
Pre in 1952--/e first Ameri-
can off'eris //to do s. In 1955,
siiks as tndi'arsiat''si ont /
first amist/ Pe, ctiresen/c. ass-
Isis /s t Asnmericanet ' w/ I
/>as no / lie(, fIrer io dy sisu'-
i' /i li'sh itf/i 5 tI sa ri
rec/ l / e/i a so as ec n d
/>rini a rc C o e umr e in
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