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" I expect my immortality will last about six seconds after my funeral. "
Donald Hall
Will
Expect
Funeral
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" I have written some poetry and two prose books about baseball, but if I had been a rich man, I probably would not have written many of the magazine essays that I have had to do. But, needing to write magazine essays to support myself, I looked to things that I cared about and wanted to write about, and certainly baseball was one of them. "
Donald Hall
Man
Myself
Poetry
" I felt the need to be more open and expressive of my feelings, not just about the hills and the countryside, but about the daily life. "
Donald Hall
Life
Need
Daily
" I was at Harvard with a whole bunch of poets, and that was very rare. They published a lot of books because there was an excitement after the war that translated into poetry. "
Donald Hall
Books
Excitement
Harvard
" On September twentieth every year, I got to choose my menu - meatloaf, corn niblets, and rice were followed by candles on chocolate cake with vanilla icing and a scoop of Brock-Hall ice cream. "
Donald Hall
Choose
Chocolate
Cake
" In the fifties, no one wore beards. In Eisenhower's day, as in the time of the Founding Fathers, all chins were smooth, while during the Civil War, beards were as common as sepsis. "
Donald Hall
Day
Smooth
Time
" I think my very best work came out when I was about 60, not when I was 20. I was publishing all the time when I was in my 20s, and some of those poems I still like. And there were a few after 60, and in my 70s, that I like. But they became fewer and fewer. "
Donald Hall
Work
Think
Out
" I loathe the trivialization of poetry that happens in creative writing classes. Teachers set exercises to stimulate subject matter: Write a poem about an imaginary landscape with real people in it. Write about a place your parents lived in before you were born. We have enough terrible poetry around without encouraging more of it. "
Donald Hall
Poetry
Parents
People
" Poetry is what I've done my whole life. And every important thing in my life had found itself into poems. "
Donald Hall
My Life
Poetry
Done
" When I lament and darken over my diminishments, I accomplish nothing. It's better to sit at the window all day, pleased to watch birds, barns, and flowers. "
Donald Hall
Better
Day
Birds
" In December of 1952, my first wife, Kirby, and I left Vienna to drive through the Russian sector of Austria into Yugoslavia. "
Donald Hall
Through
Left
First
" I write longhand; I make changes longhand, and I have an assistant who types it up. She lives 70 yards away. Every afternoon, I have a case I leave out on the porch, and she brings it back the next morning. "
Donald Hall
She
Changes
Leave
" I have seen so many poets who were famous, who won all sorts of prizes, disappear with their death. I write as good as I can and don't try to turn that into some hope for a future that I could never know. "
Donald Hall
Know
Hope
Future
" Many years, I would publish four books - an anthology, a book of criticism, a new book of poems, a book of essays. "
Donald Hall
Four
Years
New
" Many times I have written something, and after it was published, I understood what I was saying. "
Donald Hall
Understood
Something
Many
" I don't have a computer. I never have had one. "
Donald Hall
Had
Never
Computer
" I would work until I got stuck, and I would put it down and pick up something else. I might be able to take a 20-minute nap and get to work again. That way, I was able to work about 10 hours a day... It was important to me to work every day. I managed to work on Christmas day, just to be able to say I worked 365 days a year. "
Donald Hall
Day
Christmas
Important
" I'd heard of writers who say they hate to write. Not me. I love to do it. "
Donald Hall
Me
Say
Write
" Every afternoon, I shut the door of my bedroom to write: Poetry was secret, dangerous, wicked and delicious. "
Donald Hall
Wicked
Bedroom
Dangerous
" My parents were willing to let me follow my nose, do what I wanted to do, and they supported my interest by buying the books that I wanted for birthdays and Christmas, almost always poetry books. "
Donald Hall
Me
Christmas
Parents
" We approached Athens from the north in early twilight, climbing a hill. When we reached its peak, we were dazzled to look down and see the Acropolis struck by one beam of the setting sun, as if posing for a picture. "
Donald Hall
Down
Sun
Posing
" As I look at the barn in my ninth decade, I see the no-smoking sign, rusted and tilting on the unpainted gray clapboard. My grandfather, born in 1875, milked his cattle there a century ago. "
Donald Hall
Born
Barn
Look
" Even famous poets such as Marianne Moore and William Carlos Williams were rarely asked to read their poems. "
Donald Hall
Rarely
Read
Were
" It is sensible of me to be aware that I will die one of these days. I will not 'pass away.' "
Donald Hall
Die
Will
Away
" Contentment is work so engrossing that you do not know that you are working. "
Donald Hall
Know
Contentment
Work
" When I lived summers at my grandparents' farm, haying with my grandfather from 1938 to 1945, my dear grandmother Kate cooked abominably. For noon dinners, we might eat three days of fricasseed chicken from a setting hen that had boiled twelve hours. "
Donald Hall
Three
Eat
Chicken
" For better or worse, poetry is my life. "
Donald Hall
Better
Life
My Life
" There are books all around me... I don't read as much as I used to, but I always have a book or two going. "
Donald Hall
Book
Me
Always
" It used to be that one poet in each generation performed poems in public. In the twenties, it was Vachel Lindsay, who sometimes dropped to his knees in the middle of a poem. Then Robert Frost took over, and made his living largely on the road. "
Donald Hall
Generation
Sometimes
Road
" Divorce was miserable, as it always is, and we divorce for the same reasons we marry. "
Donald Hall
Divorce
Always
Same
" I'm happy to feed the squirrels - tree rats with the agility of point guards - but in fair weather, they frighten my finches. They leap from snowbank to porch to feeder and stuff their cheek pouches with chickadee feed. "
Donald Hall
Point
Weather
Happy