On this State of the Arts, MPR’s Marianne Combs talks with poet Donald Hall tabout how he came to be a poet, why he writes, and culture. Segment includes Hall reading his poems.

Hall is widely considered to be one of America's greatest poets. He's published fifteen volumes of poetry. The two works "Without" and "The Painted Bed" deal with the death of his wife, poet Jane Kenyon.

Transcript:

(00:00:00) The origin of your lowlife story always a silly something meant I am I was 12. I loved horror movies and I used to go down to see Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein or whatever, you know, it did take a bus down to the city and the boy next door who's a little older said if you like that stuff you ought to read Edgar Allan Poe. I read Edgar Allan Poe. I was a great reader anyway, but I've had I've drawn them Po and I thought this is the best stuff ever written is more so morbid. It's so creepy. I love it. It and I started writing poems. They didn't really sound like Poe but they were morbid like Poe and from that. Oh, I read a biography of Poe, which said that when he was 14, he was reading Keats and Shelley. Well, I was only 12 and I was going to be two

(00:00:47) years before

(00:00:49) so I saved up my money and bought the modern Library giant of Keats and Shelley and read it and wrote terrible new romantic poems, you know, and when I was 14, I Did that this is what I was going to do the rest of my life wide Palms. Why

(00:01:04) what was it about it later?

(00:01:06) Thank you so much. I love first of all say I love what I read and I wanted to make stuff like this second of all I wanted to be cool and I wanted girls to think I was interesting. I tried Sports and I couldn't do anything. I was terrible and any type of poetry would do it. Yeah and part you didn't do much for the cheerleaders when you're when I was working here. But when you get older it's more effective.

(00:01:33) So what was it about poetry that held the special power for you that narrative didn't

(00:01:39) sound and I started with somebody the sound of the poem. I say that you read a poem not with your ears not with your eyes, but with your mouth and it said wow music and then there were other things besides sound but sound was sort of my doorway into poetry

(00:01:59) you are doing All this reading and writing of bad poetry you say when you were 12 and 13. How long was it before you found your voice for poetry?

(00:02:07) Oh, I don't know. Well certainly not until I was in college and then Within a few years afterwards. I think I was sounding like myself I would you know, when I was growing up Ponte Cummings and for two months think he's the best thing in the world on that sound like him and I think that's a good way to learn. I didn't do it on purpose. But at some point if you were something in you is strong enough your ego is big enough for whatever you start making a noise that's composed of lots of other. It but it sounds like you

(00:02:49) you were married to Jane Kenyan the writer and your last two books of poetry have dealt rather extensively with her illness and death and your life in the wake of that and my grieving. Yeah, you're grieving for her death. How has the Poetry helped you through that? Yeah,

(00:03:08) poetry has helped me. I've sought to many times a stupid and maybe arrogant thing to say. How does somebody do it without without? Being able to write about it. Well, obviously most people can't do what I'm doing. But without in the first year after her death seemed to say my life. I am writing those poems of misery and about suffering and so on. I was happy for two hours a day. I was happy writing doing what I've done for 60 years out of this misery putting it down and I needed to do that. And I wanted to get it right and I also knew but I'm not pretending this was my motive. I knew that if I did it, right it would help other people and I know that because when Jane and I were both healthy and someone died who was close to us. We would read aloud to each other from the old poets. There's a 17th century poem of allergy dude, perhaps my favorite Henry king poem called The X equation written as it happens. When his young wife died. It was when when Jane took sick, I couldn't read very well and so on. I was by her side for 15 months and I could bring her hot blanket or something I go but I couldn't do much for her. I wrote and I wrote about her illness part of the time and we were without euphemism and absolutely Frank and she would say, what are you writing? And I'd say maybe it's about you and I'd read it and she tell me what you thought of it. Poetry was part of the love between us.

(00:04:50) What sort of Legacy do you think? Your poetry leaves for a culture. I mean how best to say this. What do you think poetry contribute to our culture

(00:05:03) only? Embodiment of human feeling and it's just from within the culture and within why myself at the moment it's kind of impossible for me to imagine what my legacy maybe if there is a legacy many Poets of credibility and dine and not right anymore and I'm perfectly aware that this may happen with me. But I hope it doesn't but I won't know

(00:05:33) about it. I'd like you to read a poem from your book The Painted bed. This one's called Maison du jour

(00:05:40) Dewey. The night refills itself Limestone drops to the see that varies blue all day between capes that curve like a Lover's arms to hold the Tranquil Waters here on a stone bench. We watched the darkening Bay. It's almost still soft skin this morning. We drove among Rock Villages and Orchards to visit matisse's Chapel with its carnal blues and yellows on Nice our room and olives root star virgin oil from the Earth's body surging upward to leaves silvery green and dark after Siesta. We throbbed with the olives thrust and our bodies floated as buoyant as the see that rolls inside us tonight are joyous flesh sighs every cell breathing alert to stories of pastel stucco wood tile roof. Eggs and filigreed balconies to the Setting Sun that top lights with gold a Mediterranean Cloud last night. We were knowing that nothing will last. Now we sit idle content from breath to breath in the house of today. Across from our bench a woman in a long black Smock closes the shutters of her pink facade.