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    The Back Chamber: Poems
    The Back Chamber: Poems
    The Back Chamber: Poems
    Ebook66 pages27 minutes

    The Back Chamber: Poems

    By Donald Hall

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    The former US poet laureate has crafted poems full of “unexpected insights, charms, droll observations, self-mockery, and well-earned wisdom” (Rain Taxi).

    In The Back Chamber, Donald Hall illuminates the evocative, iconic objects of deep memory—a cowbell, a white stone perfectly round, a three-legged milking stool—that serve to foreground the rich meditations on time and mortality that run through this remarkable collection. While Hall’s devoted readers will recognize many of his long-standing preoccupations—baseball, the family farm, love, sex, and friendship—what will strike them as new is the fierce, pitiless poignancy he reveals as his own life’s end comes into view. The Back Chamber is far from being death-haunted, but rather is lively, irreverent, erotic, hilarious, ironic, and sly—full of the life-affirming energy that has made Donald Hall one of America’s most popular and enduring poets.

    “For the reader boiling in triple-digit SoCal heat at the end of the summer, Donald Hall’s The Back Chamber: Poems arrives like a sudden cloudburst and shower of cooling rain . . . A former U.S. poet laureate, Hall has always had this elemental power—to vividly evoke his particular New England climate and geography so that it can’t be mistaken for any other—but what is more unexpected in this new collection of poems, his 16th, is passion.” —Los Angeles Times

    “The former U.S. poet laureate reaches his 20th book in unmistakably honest form, aggressively plain and unfailingly open about sex, old age, suicide, recovery, the friendship of poets, the business of poetry, dogs, New Hampshire, and baseball.” —Publishers Weekly
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateSep 13, 2011
    ISBN9780547646459
    The Back Chamber: Poems
    Author

    Donald Hall

    DONALD HALL (1928-2018) served as poet laureate of the United States from 2006 to 2007. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a recipient of the National Medal of the Arts, awarded by the president.

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      Book preview

      The Back Chamber - Donald Hall

      I

      MEATLOAF

      The Things

      When I walk in my house I see pictures,

      bought long ago, framed and hanging

      —de Kooning, Arp, Laurencin, Henry Moore—

      that I’ve cherished and stared at for years,

      yet my eyes keep returning to the masters

      of the trivial—a white stone perfectly round,

      tiny lead models of baseball players, a cowbell,

      a broken great-grandmother’s rocker,

      a dead dog’s toy—valueless, unforgettable

      detritus that my children will throw away

      as I did my mother’s souvenirs of trips

      with my dead father, Kodaks of kittens,

      and bundles of cards from her mother Kate.

      Love’s Progress

      When love empties itself out,

      it fills our bodies full.

      For an hour we lie twining

      pulse and skin together

      like nurslings who sigh

      and doze, dreamy with milk.

      Showtunes

      After their tumult, as they quieted,

                She breathed into his ear

                 The tunes she loved to sing,

      Measuring out the songs of Fred Astaire.

                 After she left, he slept

                   Deeply, except

      To wake from a dream that brought back everything.

      Now on the chest of drawers beside the bed

                 The candle stays unlit

                 That cast its flickering

      Over her face as she sighed in wanton secret.

                 He cannot go to sleep,

                   Needing to keep

      His ears tuned to the phone that does not ring.

      The Ruins

      Snow rises as high as my windows. Inside by the fire

      my chair is warm, and I remain compounded of cold.

      It is unthinkable that we will not touch each other again.

      As the barn’s bats swoop, vastation folds its wings

      over my chest to enclose my rapid, impetuous heart.

      It is ruinous that we will not touch each other again.

      Ten miles away, snow falls on your clapboard house.

      You play with your children in frozen meadows of snow.

      Conclusion at Union Lake

      We walked in a comfortless quiet

      to sit on the shore of Union Lake

      an hour in July, as light struck up

      white-green from lilypads, motionless

      in the steady sun of afternoon,

      while loons uncannily wailed

      at lake’s end, and we watched

      mallards drifting two by two.

      We sat without speaking, until

      the chainsaw rattle of a lightplane

      ripped and concluded our silence.

      We’d better be going, she said.

      We folded the plaid blanket,

      picked up our things, and walked

      to the clapboard house, not looking

      at the lake we’d never go to again.

      Oaks and red maple overhead

      gathered as if to

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