American - Poet | September 20, 1928 - June 23, 2018
We approached Athens from the north in early twilight, climbing a hill. When we reached its peak, we were dazzled to look down and see the Acropolis struck by one beam of the setting sun, as if posing for a picture.
Donald Hall
SunPicturePosingLookEarlyDown
However alert we are, antiquity remains an unknown, unanticipated galaxy.
UnknownGalaxyAlertRemainsHowever
I loathe the trivialization of poetry that happens in creative writing classes. Teachers set exercises to stimulate subject matter: Write a poem about an imaginary landscape with real people in it. Write about a place your parents lived in before you were born. We have enough terrible poetry around without encouraging more of it.
CreativePoetryParentsPeopleYou
Even famous poets such as Marianne Moore and William Carlos Williams were rarely asked to read their poems.
FamousReadEvenPoemsPoetsWere
I'm happy to feed the squirrels - tree rats with the agility of point guards - but in fair weather, they frighten my finches. They leap from snowbank to porch to feeder and stuff their cheek pouches with chickadee feed.
TreeHappyWeatherLeapFairPorch
I felt the need to be more open and expressive of my feelings, not just about the hills and the countryside, but about the daily life.
LifeDailyDaily LifeFeelingsNeed
Everything important always begins from something trivial.
WisdomImportantAlwaysEverything
Contentment is work so engrossing that you do not know that you are working.
WorkYouKnowContentmentWorking
Each season, my balance gets worse, and sometimes I fall. I no longer cook for myself but microwave widower food, mostly Stouffer's. My fingers are clumsy and slow with buttons.
MyselfFoodBalanceSlowFallCook
In 1975, I quit my tenure, and we moved from Ann Arbor to New Hampshire. It was daunting to pay for groceries and the mortgage by freelance writing - but it worked, and I loved doing it.
WritingLovedDoingNewQuitPay
New poems no longer come to me with their prodigies of metaphor and assonance. Prose endures. I feel the circles grow smaller, and old age is a ceremony of losses, which is, on the whole, preferable to dying at forty-seven or fifty-two.
AgeOld AgeMeGrowFeelNew
I would work until I got stuck, and I would put it down and pick up something else. I might be able to take a 20-minute nap and get to work again. That way, I was able to work about 10 hours a day... It was important to me to work every day. I managed to work on Christmas day, just to be able to say I worked 365 days a year.
WorkDayMeYearEvery DayDown
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