- Paperback: 108 pages
- Publisher: Mariner Books; 1 edition (April 9 2003)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0618340750
- ISBN-13: 978-0618340750
- Product Dimensions: 23.1 x 15.2 x 0.8 cm
- Shipping Weight: 150 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #920,022 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Hall has for decades been an eminent poet and critic; his previous book, Without (1999), was a raw collection of elegies for his late wife, the poet Jane Kenyon, that brought attention to their lives and work. More controlled, more varied and more powerful, this taut follow-up volume reexamines Hall's grief while exploring the life he has made since. The book's first poem, "Kill the Day," stands among the best Hall has ever written. It examines mourning in 16 long-lined stanzas, alternating catalogue with aphorism, understatement with keened lament: "How many times will he die in his own lifetime?" Two groups of terse, short-lined free verse proffer stories and moments from Kenyon's last days and from Hall's first days without her: "You think that their dying is the worst thing that could happen. Then they stay dead." Subsequent brief stanzaic lyrics take both epigraph and method from Thomas Hardy's poems on the loss of his wife: some will please both Hardy's fans and Hall's. But even those fans may skip "Daylilies on the Hill," a lengthy and overly detailed verse history of the by now familiar New Hampshire house that Hall and Kenyon shared. The book's last poems range from raunchy to wise as they explore sex in later age "Sometimes our red fitted sheets maneuvered to embrace us like pythons." The final poem, ironically called "Affirmation," contains a more typical and typically stark prediction: "If a new love carries us past middle age, our wife will die at her strongest and most beautiful." (Apr.)Forecast: The press blitz that accompanied Without won't materialize here, but it won't matter to Hall's (and Kenyon's) many readers. Look for broader reviews centered on the poetry of illness and grief that could include this book, Alan Shapiro's Song & Dance (Forecasts, Dec. 17, 2001), Linda Pastan's The Last Uncle (Forecasts, Jan. 21) and Donald Revell's Arcady (reviewed below).
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.From Booklist
Even as he has suffered from his wife Jane Kenyon's death and the declining powers of age, Hall has continued growing as a poet, and his steady readers may consider this his finest collection. The long, long-lined opening poem, "Kill the Day," considers his grief over Jane from a few years later than the raw, bleeding poems of Without (1998), and reports a bleak existence but limns it with compelling beauty. Bleakness and beauty characterize the reminiscent lyrics that follow, too, joined by a breathtaking bluntness, as in this "Distressed Haiku": "You think that their / dying is the worst / thing that could happen. // Then they stay dead." A second long-lined, long poem, "Daylilies on the Hill 1975-1989," however, celebrates his grandparents' old house, which he restored to be his home, and some humbly momentous events in its history. The love that breaks through in "Daylilies" skittishly informs the bawdy poems that lead to the final "Affirmation" that "it is fitting / and delicious to lose everything." Amen. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
gets a bit weighty,
By adead_poet@hotmail.com "adead_poet@hotmail.com" (Beaumont, tx USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Painted Bed: Poems (Paperback)
Donald Hall's collection The Painted Bed sort of does more of the same, lamenting the loss of his wife. A poem or two is one thing, but whole book? There are some good poems in this book, both of the long poems are pretty good ("Kill the Day" & "Daylillies on the Hill"). Hall's painted bed is just too much, though I also thought "Impossible Lovers" was pretty good.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Magnificent,
By
This review is from: The Painted Bed: Poems (Paperback)
Heartbreak recollected in sublimity. The long "Daylilies" poem tells of the loss of the poet's family members over two centuries in his New Hampshire farmhouse. Walls, beams, lathe, handmade nails, everything about the house goes into a sense of infinite loss over the centuries and parallels the loss of his wife. We all go into the night, but it's great to go in the hands of a poet like Hall.
5.0 out of 5 stars
On Death and Dying,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Painted Bed: Poems (Hardcover)
At 47 Jane Kenyon, much younger than her husband Donald Hall, should have buried him; but that was not meant to be. In this slim volume of poetry, Hall writes eloquently of his wife's death, his love for her, his grief, despair and eventual acceptance of life without his wife. The poems are best if read straight through. They are highly personal, sometimes almost embarrassingly so. We should thank Mr. Hall for sharing his most intimate thoughts on such a private and painful subject.Mr. Hall's imagery is beautiful. Listen to the opening lines of "Kill The Day." "When she died it was as if her car accelerated In the poem "Ardor" lust is described as "grief that has turned over in bed to look the other way." Finally in the concluding poem in the book "Affirmation" Hall describes the indifference of the young to growing old with this wonderful image: "we row for years on the midsummer pond, ignorant and content." These poems bring, if not comfort, at least the knowldge that we are not alone in our own losses. As in all good art, the particular becomes the universal.
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