April 27: Shatter Like Glass, Book Club, Donald Hall

Billy didn't want to drop from the car to the ground.  He sincerely believed he would shatter like glass.  So the guards helped him down, cooing still.  They set him down facing the train.  It was such a dinky train now.

There was a locomotive, a tender, and three little boxcars.  The last box car was the railroad guards' heaven on wheels.  Again--in that heaven on wheels--the table was set.  Dinner was served.

Billy is a little disconnected from reality.  He's traveled for days in a dark railroad boxcar, without sleep, without much food.  He feels fragile, like a piece of crystal that would splinter if exposed to sudden movement or operatic high notes.  So he sits, stares at the guards and their food.

It is Book Club night.  My house is prepped, the casserole is in the oven.  This month's selection (in honor of National Poetry Month) is former U. S. Poet Laureate Donald Hall's book Essays After Eighty.  It's a beautiful collection, and Hall, pushing into his ninetieth decade of living, is undiminished in talent and wit.  He's an inspiration to me as a writer and person.

I remember, a few summers ago, an occasion where I was able to attend a dinner held in Hall's honor.  There he sat in his wheelchair, signing books, looking a little grizzled and wild.  When we started speaking together, Hall's years seemed to melt away.  He spoke of a mutual friend we had, and, I swear to God, he giggled as he told me a story about the friend.

That moment, speaking with Donald Hall, was a Billy Pilgrim disconnect moment for me.  If I had shattered into a pile of dust, I would have died a happy man.

So, the table is set.  I am wearing my old man flannel shirt in honor of Donald Hall.

Saint Marty is thankful tonight for his Book Club friends.

The great man and Saint Marty

April 22: Process of Aging, Donald Hall, "White Apples"

I just finished Donald Hall's book Essays After Eighty this afternoon.  Hall has been keeping me company all week long, so I read the last page with a little sadness.  Of course, I could go back and reread my favorite essays, but it wouldn't be the same.  It would be like watching a movie I've already seen.  (I am not opposed to this practice.  However, the second or third or fiftieth viewing of, say, Psycho is just not the same as that first time.)

Hall's book was all about the process of aging.  The diminishments.  Hall can no longer write poetry.  Hence, a book of prose essays.  Writing prose is, for some reason, easier for him as he approaches his ninetieth year of life.

But, I do have a Hall poem for you this evening.  It's about loss and grief and death.  You know, standard poet stuff.

Saint Marty is going to miss his visits with Donald.

White Apples

by:  Donald Hall

when my father had been dead a week
I woke
with his voice in my ear
I sat 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

April 19: Honors, Poet of the Week, Donald Hall, "Name of Horses"

 I must apologize for my absence yesterday.  After a long weekend of dance and travel, I succumbed to a bout of exhaustion.  I wasn't feeling well enough to sit down with my laptop and be witty, charming, or profound.  I was happy to simply be upright last night.  However, I have recovered.

I bet most of you thought I had abandoned my tradition of choosing a Poet of the Week.  I haven't.  I simply took a brief hiatus from it.

But now, due to an overwhelming surge of disgruntled disciples, I am happy once again to bestow the title of Poet of the Week.  Donald Hall is the recipient of this great honor.  As you know, I have been reading his book Essays After Eighty and reveling in his good humor and lack of respect for authority.  I just finished one chapter of the book on Hall's feelings about awards and honors.  (Hint:  he doesn't really give a shit.)

In the poem for today, Hall writes of the honorableness of horses.  The hard, back-breaking work done by these animals for humankind.  That's something worthy of immortality in Hall's estimation, I think.

And if it's good enough for Donald Hall, it's good enough for Saint Marty.


Name of Horses

by:  Donald Hall

All winter your brute shoulders strained against collars, padding
and steerhide over the ash hames, to haul
sledges of cordwood for drying through spring and summer,
for the Glenwood stove next winter, and for the simmering range.

In April you pulled cartloads of manure to spread on the fields,
dark manure of Holsteins, and knobs of your own clustered with oats.
All summer you mowed the grass in meadow and hayfield, the mowing machine
clacketing beside you, while the sun walked high in the morning;

and after noon's heat, you pulled a clawed rake through the same acres,
gathering stacks, and dragged the wagon from stack to stack,
and the built hayrack back, uphill to the chaffy barn,
three loads of hay a day from standing grass in the morning.

Sundays you trotted the two miles to church with the light load
a leather quartertop buggy, and grazed in the sound of hymns.
Generation on generation, your neck rubbed the windowsill
of the stall, smoothing the wood as the sea smooths glass.

When you were old and lame, when your shoulders hurt bending to graze,
one October the man, who fed you and kept you, and harnessed you every morning,
led you through corn stubble to sandy ground above Eagle Pond,
and dug a hole beside you where you stood shuddering in your skin,

and lay the shotgun's muzzle in the boneless hollow behind your ear,
and fired the slug into your brain, and felled you into your grave,
shoveling sand to cover you, setting goldenrod upright above you,
where by next summer a dent in the ground made your monument.

For a hundred and fifty years, in the Pasture of dead horses,
roots of pine trees pushed through the pale curves of your ribs,
yellow blossoms flourished above you in autumn, and in winter
frost heaved your bones in the ground - old toilers, soil makers:

O Roger, Mackerel, Riley, Ned, Nellie, Chester, Lady Ghost.