Without
Poems
Donald Hall
- 96 Seiten
- English
- ePUB (handyfreundlich)
- Über iOS und Android verfügbar
Without
Poems
Donald Hall
Über dieses Buch
You might expect the fact of dying--the dying of a beloved wife and fellow poet--to make for a bleak and lonely tale. But Donald Hall's poignant and courageous poetry, facing that dread fact, involves us all: the magnificent, humorous, and gifted woman, Jane Kenyon, who suffered and died; the doctors and nurses who tried but failed to save her; the neighbors, friends, and relatives who grieved for her; the husband who sat by her while she lived and afterward sat in their house alone with his pain, self-pity, and fury; and those of us who till now had nothing to do with it. As Donald Hall writes, "Remembered happiness is agony; so is remembered agony." Without will touch every feeling reader, for everyone has suffered loss and requires the fellowship of elegy. In the earth's oldest poem, when Gilgamesh howls of the death of Enkidu, a grieving reader of our own time may feel a kinship, across the abyss of four thousand years, with a Sumerian king. In Without Donald Hall speaks to us all of grief, as a poet lamenting the death of a poet, as a husband mourning the loss of a wife. Without is Hall's greatest and most honorable achievement -- his give and testimony, his lament and his celebration of loss and of love.
Häufig gestellte Fragen
Information
Air Shatters in the
Car’s Small Room
Distracting myselfon the recliner betweenJane’s hospital bedand window, in this blueroom where we endure,I set syllablesinto prosy lines.William Butler Yeatsdenounced with passion"the poetry ofpassive suffering.”Friends and strangerswrite letters speakingof courage or strength.What else could we doexcept what we do?Should we weep lyingflat? We do. Sometimes,driving the Hondawith its windows closedin beginning autumnfrom the low motelto Jane’s bed, I screamand keep on screaming.
They flew all day acrossthe country to the hospital for hard cases.The night before Janeentered isolation in Seattle for chemo,TBI, and a stranger’sbone marrow—for life or death—they slepttogether, as they understood,maybe for the last time. His bodycurved into Jane’s,his knees tucked to the backs of her knees;he pressed her warm soft thighs,back, waist, and rump, making the spoons,and the spoons clatteredwith a sound like the end man’s bones.
As they killed her bonemarrow again, she lay on a gurneyalone in a leadenroom between machines that resembledpot-bellied stoveswhich spewed out Total Body Irradiationfor eleven half-hoursessions measured over four days.It was as if she cappedthe Chernobyl pile with her body.
The courier broughtbone marrow in an insulated bottlefrom the donor, a namelessthirty-nine-year-old female whosent along words“To the Recipient.” Jane’s“For the Donor” flew backsomewhere, where a stranger lay flatwith an anesthetichangover and pelvic bones that ached—and with disinterestedlove, which is the greatest of these.
Jane lay silent on her backas pink liquid leached through a tubefrom a six-inch-squareplastic envelope. It was Day Zero.
By Day Eleven, mucositisfrom the burn of Total Body Irradiationfrayed her mouth apartcell by cell, peeling her lips and tongue.
To enter her antibioticcube, it took him fifteen minutesto suit up, wearing a widepaper hat, yellow mask, long whitebooties like a DallasCowgirl, blue paper surgical gown,and sterile latex gloves.Jane said he looked like a huge condom.
He woke at five, brewedcoffee, swallowed pills, injected insulin,shaved, ate breakfast, packedthe tote with Jane’s sweats he washedat night, filled the thermos,and left the apartment on Spring Streetto walk a block and a halfto the hospital’s bone marrow floor.Waiting for the lightto cross the avenue, briefly he imaginedthrowing himself in frontof that bus. He knew he wouldn’t.
Discharged at last,she returned to sleep with him againin the flat jerry-builtfor bald tenants and their caregivers.He counted out medsand programmed pumps to deliverhydration, TPN,and ganciclovir. He needed to learn...
Inhaltsverzeichnis
- Title Page
- Contents
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Her Long Illness
- “A Beard for a Blue Pantry”
- Song for Lucy
- The Porcelain Couple
- The Ship Pounding
- Air Shatters in the Car’s Small Room
- Blues for Polly
- Last Days
- Without
- The Gallery
- Letter with No Address
- Independence Day Letter
- Letter from Washington
- Midsummer Letter
- Letter in Autumn
- Letter at Christmas
- Letter in the New Year
- Postcard: January 22nd
- Midwinter Letter
- Letter after a Year
- Weeds and Peonies
- Read More from Donald Hall
- About the Author
- Connect with HMH