Know Your Laureate!

HERE is a link to a great article on the newest U.S. poet laureate, Donald Hall. It's great stuff -- gives a pretty good biographical sketch (some of you may also know him as the husband of the late poet master Jane Kenyon), selections of his work, and glimpses of some of the things he plans to do to raise the profile of poetry in America as our new laureate.

And for those of you who willfully choose, to your doom, not to click on the link, here is one of his poems:

Ox Cart Man
by Donald Hall


In October of the year,
he counts potatoes dug from the brown field,
counting the seed, counting
the cellar's portion out,
and bags the rest on the cart's floor.

He packs wool sheared in April, honey
in combs, linen, leather
tanned from deerhide,
and vinegar in a barrel
hoped by hand at the forge's fire.

He walks by his ox's head, ten days
to Portsmouth Market, and sells potatoes,
and the bag that carried potatoes,
flaxseed, birch brooms, maple sugar, goose
feathers, yarn.

When the cart is empty he sells the cart.
When the cart is sold he sells the ox,
harness and yoke, and walks
home, his pockets heavy
with the year's coin for salt and taxes,

and at home by fire's light in November cold
stitches new harness
for next year's ox in the barn,
and carves the yoke, and saws planks
building the cart again.




From White Apples and the Taste of Stone. Copyright © 2006 by Donald Hall.