Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: Without : Poems by Donald Hall ISBN: 0395957656 Publisher: Mariner Books Pub. Date: April, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.6
Rating: 5
Summary: Tactful, Subtle, Brilliant
Comment: Without constitutes my first experience with Donald Hall's poetry, need I say it was not my last? This collection reads like a novel, it is really a fluid sequence of accounts of his wife's death, either in devastatingly ironic and witty snapshots or extended odes and elegies such as the harrowing "Letter With No Address," written to his dead wife, nearly all of which will grab you by the throat and suck you into the spaces in between the words. Hall knew that if he was going to try and rip a vein of life from his soul and convey its contents to his readers, he could only do so by immersing them within the poems themselves. Few poets ever develop the kind of authenticity of voice required to achieve such a feat. It is surely a standard to which any poet aspires.
Donald Hall approached this project perfectly. This is not a collection that stammers with captivating imagery or the kind of unfathomable metaphorical connections that are found in the work of our best American poets such as Hart Crane or Walt Whitman. Hall knew that in devoting a collection of poems to such a personal and painful experience, one that obviously left its fang marks on his heart, he risked committing some of the cardinal sins of poetry, such as mawkishness and self-pity.
Hall avoids those pitfalls at every conceivable instance. His ability to blend sentimentality with dry irony and compelling wit, compounded by his successful effort to keep himself out of the poems despite his inevitable relation to them, make this the finest collection of his career, and indeed the work of a man who just may be ranked among our very top American poets somewhere down the line. Without stands among the most riveting documents of love, desire and loss to be found throughout the history of American Poetry.
Rating: 5
Summary: Devastatingly beautiful
Comment: Only this evening I finished reading "Without." I remain stunned by not only the quality of the poetry, but by the utter honesty of Donald Hall in his documentation of his wife's illness and death.
No one other than Galway Kinnell has, for me, expressed with such simple clarity through their poetry the sometimes unbearable anguish of simply being human. Anyone who has ever suffered the loss of another, whether through death or distance, will grieve with Hall and appreciate the pain that this art required.
This book will remain with me for many years, as I know it will be one to which I will be compelled to return. Read it, and appreciate every day you are given.
Rating: 4
Summary: Goodbye, Jane...
Comment: I discovered Jane Kenyon when her poem "Otherwise" and her beautiful presence aired on Bill Moyers' "The Language of Life". It was the year I found I could no longer tolerate my depression and set about creating a new life that I learned of her depression. I learned that she had been born one year earlier, and in her poetry I found us kindred spirits. Then I found she was dying of leukemia, and indeed died that next year after the research center across the street had once again made promises it could not keep. My best friend's husband had heard the same promises and suffered the same fate. Last week Seattle's beloved school superintendent had those same promises fail him. When I heard Donald Hall had written poems on her death, I had a mixed reaction. I did not want her death minimized or exploited. Yet, I wanted her remembered, her courage and victory over herself. So it was some months later when I picked up "Without" and began reading of the journey Donald and Jane made together, a journey not unfamiliar to those who have taken the path before them. I felt their pain, their love, and their courage. It was difficult reading, I felt as though I knew her personally, and I grieved her more than others. But he wrote with grace, love and truth. Jane is there in the poems, and in all the works she leaves beind. If only we had had her for a little longer.
 |
Title: Otherwise: New and Selected Poems by Jane Kenyon, Donald Hall ISBN: 1555972667 Publisher: Graywolf Press Pub. Date: August, 1997 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
 |
Title: The Painted Bed: Poems by Donald Hall ISBN: 0618187898 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 11 April, 2002 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
 |
Title: Life Work by Donald Hall ISBN: 0807070556 Publisher: Beacon Press Pub. Date: October, 1994 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
 |
Title: Let Evening Come: Poems by Jane Kenyon ISBN: 1555971318 Publisher: Graywolf Press Pub. Date: April, 1990 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
 |
Title: The Old Life by Donald Hall ISBN: 0395856000 Publisher: Mariner Books Pub. Date: April, 1997 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
