Love, in many forms, persuades humanity to write. It is love that can send a man to his knees weeping and a woman to stand up in strength. And with its many effects, it will lift people up to the highest of highs and just as quickly send them crashing back down, sometimes to death.
Love is involved in the many tragedies in history, also in many inspirational instances. All are a victim to this emotion from heaven and hell either by another, an object, or an idea. This is also true for Donald Hall.
During 1928, in New Haven Connecticut, Hall was born. As an only child to a businessman and his wife, he was an ordinary boy destined to do extraordinary things. During his youth he was writing poems and short stories. Soon after he began writing novels and dramatic verse. (interviews-with-poets.com)
Hall met his second wife in 1972, Jane Kenyon, while teaching at the University of Michigan. He married her in 1975 and moved to New Hampshire which ended his eighteen year faculty position at the university. On his great-grandfather‘s farm next to Eagle Lake he still lives to this day. In 1992, Hall was diagnosed with cancer and in a horrible twist of fate, his wife died in 1995 from Leukemia. (Holman & Snyder)
However intriguing these facts may be, the main focus of this writing is to examine the influence of love and loss in the Poet Laureate’s writings. It is plainly clear that love has affected his poetry and sent the mood of each piece in dramatic phases. After his second wife’s death in 1995, Hall’s poetry has become elegiac and more of a story-telling. He focuses more on the unstoppable force of time and mourns of things lost.
His poems have a twisted sense of reality to them. He is able to play animals, people, and places together to convey a real-world idea. His comparisons are metaphorical as each mentioned object would normally not have a connection to the theme. It is those strange comparisons that seem to give life to his writings, pushing the limits of imagination’s normal tolerance.
It is of pain and loss that he writes of consistently, the aftermath of love. In the poem, “Valentine,” Hall expressed his need to thrive on it. This is one of the few instances I have read that he actually speaks of love as it is flourishing:
Chipmunks jump, and
Greensnakes slither.
Rather burst than
Not be with her.
Bluebirds fight, but
Bears are stronger.
We've got fifty
Years or longer.
Hoptoads hop, but
Hogs are fatter.
Nothing else but
Us can matter.
As his wife fades away into her illness, Hall is left watching her digress. His poetic outlook and mood changes as she worsens. His previous, enlightened and detached poems now have become pained and burdened. It seems to be torment that allows him to write, the torment of death. In his book, Without, Hall clearly captures the pain and anguish in his life after her death, without committing the Cardinal Sins of poetry.
The Painted Bed is similar because it essentially picks up where Without left off. It’s emotion is simply stated in Tim Walker’s quote, “If you love someone permanently, if you've shared your life and your household with them, this book will break your heart.” His statement is supported by this excerpt from “The Ship Pounding'':
“Reduced to merely the frail, variously violated shell of her body, the dying woman seems in her last days to become all spirit, attached to this world by nothing more substantial than the brave parryings of a sense of humor that refuses to expire. We recall that the ancients figured the soul as a butterfly; the patient whose presence flutters through these pages, as if passing back and forth between the dead and the living, reminds us why.” (Clark)
Even after death, the poet cannot shake her presence. She is just a memory to him, a lost soul. The love and attachment he had for his wife was greatly apparent during her illness and after her death. He still cannot seem to shake the agony he is in.
That night he turned
his children out of the house
with difficulty, and was
alone again with her absence.
Before bed he drove
to the graveyard to say goodnight,
and at six a.m. dropped by
as if he brought her coffee.”
One can tell from the previous two poems that Hall was in immense pain. However, there is a dreaminess to his writings, a certain numbness. He almost seems to distance himself from the pain by giving the reader only the visual stimulation to paint a picture of pain rather than an emotional, as so commonly used. As in this example from “Weeds and Peonies”, one can see where Hall detaches himself from the poetry and allows the description of his wife’s absence to speak in his place:
“. . . Your blue coat vanishes down Pond Road into imagined snowflakes with Gus at your side, his great tail swinging, but you will not reappear, tired and satisfied, and grief's repeated particles suffuse the air -- like the dog yipping through the entire night, or the cat stretching awake, then curling as if to dream of her mother's milky nipples.”(Tom Clark)
He dedicated a book to her as well, called The Best Day The Worst Day: Life with Jane Kenyon. His love for her was powerful and his life was ripped apart by her death. His pain is surprisingly apparent in his emotionally blunt “Distressed Haiku”:
You think that their
dying is the worst
thing that could happen.
Then they stay dead.”(Walker)
It is clear to say that his love for Kenyon has been an inspiration to his writings. He displays tenderness, distress, and sadness. Surprisingly, he does this without involving himself. Yes, he is in the writing, but he is not emotionally present. Instead, the readers are put in his position, able to experience the emotion for themselves.
It is unfortunate for a man to feel such pain. However, his experiences have benefited the literary world. From reading his poems, it is easy to get a sense of loss and love. One is able to appreciate everything and everyone more after experiencing the pain of Hall’s loss expressed in his poetry.
