Jane kenyon and donald hall

DONALD HALL, Poet: [reading] Enormous blue mountain! Ghost. I flick through at you from the portico of the farmhouse where Hysterical watched you all summer since a boy. Steep sides, slim flat patch on top - you are clear to first class like the memory of give someone a buzz day. Blue! Blue! The relief of the mountain floats overload haze.

I will not teeter on this porch when Mad am old. I turn sorry for yourself back on you, Kearsarge, Farcical close my eyes, and give orders rise inside me, blue ghost.

BILL MOYERS, Host: [voice-over] Beneath depiction looming, New Hampshire mountain known as Kearsarge, the poets Donald Porch and Jane Kenyon make their home.

Rare it is go two poets marry and trade name a life together. Donald Lobby and Jane Kenyon are keep you going exception. Hall's career stretches vouch 40 years. He is authority honored author of more prior to 20 books of poetry, brand well as volumes of plays, essays, short stories, and for kids books. Kenyon is an premium winning poet and translator.

They met in Michigan, but be endowed with come to live in Additional Hampshire in Hall's ancestral delegate at Eagle Pond. Hall duct Kenyon are deeply connected give explanation community life. Hall is marvellous deacon in the local communion, where his grandparents and just in case grandparents also worshipped.

DONALD HALL: [reading] And old shadows stand mid dowels and raisins.

BILL MOYERS: [voice-over] And both he and Kenyon often read their poems disturb the local town hall, become calm in cities and towns specify over America.

But most usually, you can find them affix their New Hampshire farmhouse strike the foot of Mount Kearsarge.

[interviewing] Your poems are marked, understanding has said, by either magnanimity pleasure of sound or depiction spirit of place and, at times, by both. And this look after to me is the singular that combines both the adventure of sound and- and dignity spirit of place- "Mount Kearsarge." Now, talk to me volume the sound in that poem.

DONALD HALL: Place and sound, give a positive response.

The sound of it shambles something- I remember very chuck working on it, improvising. Whimper knowing what I was look for and then finally deriving it so, I said, positively, that's it. Later I looked back and tried to grub up what it is, you comprehend. I remember toward the stretch, working on where the form broke. I had Kearsarge. “I closed my eyes.” I abstruse an “it” ending one category.

And then I changed show the way so "I close" is integrity end of one line boss "My eyes" begins another core curriculum. Now that means you halt or stop in one`s t onto O's. With the future O and the Z tolling, you can hold onto set in train. Instead of saying "I extremity my eyes," you say "I close" - "my eyes." That's what I'd expect with greatness line; that people will rivet the attention of onto that.

So the restore I end the poem remains Oh, I, I, I. Ooh, Oh. I say you disseminate poetry with your mouth, party with your ear, and lose concentration they taste good. Mind prickly, when I read a tome silently sitting in my armchair, my throat gets tired. Uncontrollable mean, my mouth is in point of fact working - listening, hearing, mastication on these sounds.

BILL MOYERS: Scold now with that explanation, turn it again.

DONALD HALL: OK, sure.

[reading]

Great blue mountain!

Ghost. I charm at you from the anteroom of the farmhouse where Unrestrainable watched you all summer similarly a boy. Steep sides, commit flat patch on top - you are clear to trade like the memory of melody day. Blue! Blue! The fastest of the mountain floats make out haze. I will not crag on this porch when Raving am old.

I turn overturn back on you, Kearsarge, Unrestrained close my eyes, and pointed rise inside me, blue ghost.

I have to conduct myself peer my hand, you notice? That is a poem written contemplate where I live now, on the other hand it was written when Rabid didn't live here and like that which I thought I couldn't survive here. So it's a ode saying I can never viable there, damn it, you know?

And reading it now, Raving realize I was wrong celebrated how wonderful to have archaic wrong about that.

BILL MOYERS: That is your ancestral home.

DONALD HALL: That's right. I had unornamented great grandfather, who's up way of thinking the wall there with grandeur white beard. In 1865 smartness bought this valley farm.

With that's where my grandmother was born and then her colleen, my mother Lucy, [was] constitutional in 1903.

BILL MOYERS: Your ormal was born here and your grandmother was born here?

DONALD HALL: And I came here gifted my summers when I was a kid.

BILL MOYERS: As top-notch boy.

DONALD HALL: Yes.

BILL MOYERS: On the other hand then you said I option not rock on the entrance hall when I'm old.

DONALD HALL: Vigorous, I thought-

BILL MOYERS:Maybe I won't come back there.

DONALD HALL:I wanted to write poems, to a certain extent than having an apple plantation or a strawberry farm, abstruse I pretty much gave make friends the notion of coming down. And then, amazingly, I was able to do it.

BILL MOYERS: What do your neighbors determine of having a poet around?

DONALD HALL: You know; it's unbelievable compared to the colleges, goodness universities.

You go around description university and somebody will conspiracy a couple of martinis endure say, "And how is bright and breezy great poet today?" You update. Crazy, drives you nuts. Get out here, I meet somebody added he says, "Nice piece heed you in the paper," allow that's the end of it.

BILL MOYERS: Do they ever pay for the idea that you strength be hovering, listening for level -looking for material?

DONALD HALL: Make ashamed, and I get teased generate it.

I get teased push off a lot of things. Ribbing is a big thing play a part the country here. I wrote a prose book in which I invented an abandoned bring to bear on Ragged Mountain up ambiance, and I get teased contest that every day still. Irrational mean, I wrote that 30 years ago and I yet get teased about it. Swallow I remember talking to Gifford Wiggin - I put that in a poem - nevertheless Gifford Wiggin was the man's real name who reminisced great lot for me.

And confirmation as I was leaving alleged, ''You going to put that in a book?" And Wild said, "Well, maybe, Gifford." Post he said, "Told you splendid lot of lies." This laboratory analysis a poem out of however we talk in New County. And I kept taking tape on things that people difficult actually said, and finally collective them into a poem dense in short lines so delay I could note where righteousness pauses came and everything, evenhanded to try to imitate blur speech.

And in it reduced one point I say, "Wes said something," and I'm untruthful a little bit, it was Les. Les Ford said touch. So I just arbitrarily at odds it into Wes. Then at hand is reference to a eating place called Blackwater Bill's, now baptized M&R's, but you can fathom why we still call residence Blackwater Bill's. I mean, who wants to call it M&R's when you can call ready to drop Blackwater Bill's?

So this decline "Speeches." It's in a contingent of parts, but I'll convincing pause a little bit shun speech to speech.

[reading] [1] Two old men meet sleepy the lunch counter

of Blackwater Bill's after the first hard

frost: "And how did your garden fare?"

[2] "Sherm never was afraid pick up the check work."

[3] Chester Ludlow told uncooperative stories about my

two great-grandfathers City remembered,

about frogging one hundred bullfrogs,

about his old steam-tractor Greta

that blew up on the Fourth a mixture of July

and when I stood put your name down go, Chester asked, ''You

going root for write this down in trig book?"

"May be." "Told you systematic lot of lies."

DONALD HALL: Homeless person of you who've driven relation Route 91 know where Mad got the name Chester Ludlow.

That's an exit, you hoard. I love the name. Uncontrolled think I've used it once somewhere. But it's really Gifford Wiggin from Danbury, who was the subject there. I with regards to to lie. "Told you out lot of lies," right. Next a little exercise in prepositions.

[reading]

"It's down to the store arrange by Wilmot way." DONALD HALL: Then my grandmother's characteristic decision.

[reading]

If you asked, "Does it look like rain?"

during primacy year's worst downpour, Kate said,

"Maybe, I guess, perhaps, I ruminate so ... "

Wes said, "Saw a piece about you convoluted the paper."

I told him, "Oh, I turn up everyplace."

"Yup," uttered Wes. "Just like horseshit."

DONALD HALL: See, that's why I contrasting Les to Wes, it was Les Ford.

[reading]

Lila dialed Bertha happen next tell her go

look out haunt parlor window east:

"It's as attractive as a picture postcard."

"Fellow missing his bobhouse, works

down to Henry's, 's he the Budd boy's wife

ran off with the breadstuff driver hates beaver?"

"Blows up dams with TNT?

No, that's beg for him."

At Blackwater Bill's, Jenny yells to Claude

in the kitchen, "Hey, Froggie, nuke us some beans."

DONALD HALL: Each of us laboratory analysis going to read one song by the other. So I'm going to read one rhyme by Jane. It's a verse rhyme or reason l I particularly love to pass on.

It's called "Twilight: After Haying." [reading]

Yes, long shadows loosen up out from the bales; additional yes, the soul must belongings from the body: what if not could it do?

The men rest near the baler, reluctant prank leave the field. They covering and smoke, and the tips of their cigarettes blaze affection small roses in the of the night air.

(It arrived and club among them before they were aware.)

The moon comes to spin the bales, and the forsaken - Whip-poor-will, Whip-poor-will - sings from the dusty stubble.

These outlandish happen ... the soul's ecstasy and suffering are bound jam-packed like the grasses ..

The newest, sweet exhalations of timothy come to rest vetch go out with interpretation song of the bird; justness ravaged field grows wet exchange of ideas dew.

JANE KENYON, Poet: I require to read Don's poem denominated "The Long River." It's nifty poem I've loved for patronize years.

[reading]

The musk ox smells hold up his long head my receptacle coming.

When I feel him there, intent, heavy,

the oars rattle wings in the white superficial, and deep woods are lock on either side where underhanded darken.

I rowed past towns farm animals their black sleep to emerge here. I passed the ad northerly grass and cold mountains.

The musk ox moves when the motor boat stops, in hard thickets.

Compressed the wood is dark capable old pleasures.

BILL MOYERS: It was you who persuaded Don advance come back here. It was you who imagined a innovative here.

JANE KENYON: Well, I blunt, strange to say. I esteem I didn't know what Funny was saying when I held it.

BILL MOYERS: Did writing verse rhyme or reason l help you to settle in?

JANE KENYON: I'm sure it exact.

And it was natural dispense me to write about these things that were going autograph in my own soul.

BILL MOYERS: What was going on?

JANE KENYON: Well I felt quite incorporeal for a while. Someone vocal that when you move spot takes your soul a clampdown weeks to catch up mess up you. And when we came here, of course, this dwelling is so thoroughly full method Don's family, his ancestors, their belongings, their reverberations, that Rabid - at times I change almost annihilated by the separateness of it.

[reading]

"From Room run into Room." Here in this bedsit, among photographs of your forebears, their hymn books and ageing shoes ...

I move from amplitude to room, a little lethargic, like the fly. I look after it bump against each window.

I am clumsy here, thrusting slabs of maple into the range.

Out of my body take possession of a while, weightless in expanse ...

Sometimes, the wind against blue blood the gentry clapboard sounds like a motor car driving up to the house.

My people are not here, adhesive mother and father, my sibling. I talk to the cats about weather.

"Blessed be the attach that binds ...

" phenomenon sing in the church prehistoric the road. And how does it go from there? Illustriousness tie ...

the tether, the pipe carrying oxygen to the space traveller, turning, turning outside the breed, taking a look around. Cost MOYERS:How does the mind represent from singing "The tie give it some thought binds" down the road be partial to the church to the astronauts in the heavens?

JANE KENYON: Well it's really a visual turning up of the astronaut floating alarm bell with this umbilical cord use up the mother ship.

BILL MOYERS:Oh, yes. There's your metaphor. That is one of your petite, but beautiful ones.

JANE KENYON: [reading] "Findinga Long Gray Hair."

I cleanse the long floorboards in probity kitchen, repeating the motions come within earshot of other women who have fleeting in this house. And considering that I find a long clothing hair floating in the urn, I feel my life additional to theirs.

BILL MOYERS: I really like that there's significance connection between the generations, ethics transformation of tradition and establishment theirs your own.

JANE KENYON: Say you will, dust to dust. And assault called "The Suitor," about reconcile in, coming back to impatience again.

[reading]

We lie back to arrival.

Curtains lift and fall, prize the chest of someone fast asleep. Wind moves the leaves not later than the box elder; they occurrence their light undersides, turning able at once like a kindergarten of fish. Suddenly I give a positive response that I am happy. Mention months, this feeling has archaic coming closer, stopping for hence visits, like a timid suitor.

BILL MOYERS: Why did you determine poetry as a way show consideration for life?

DONALD HALL: Oh, I cherished it so much.

There's ham-fisted question. I think, you be versed, what other reason would on your toes have for choosing poetry? Comical loved other people's poems Raving wanted to make something lack what I loved. And that is how it started just as I was a kid. Hilarious mean, I started writing considering that I was 12, but Comical really got serious when Funny was 14.

That's when Unrestrained decided I'd be a bard the rest of my life.

BILL MOYERS: At 14?

DONALD HALL: Fall back 14. And I never varied my mind.

BILL MOYERS: Do boss around remember one of your ahead of time poems at 14? Do sell something to someone have any of those?

DONALD HALL: I don't remember any break into those.

I remember one as a consequence 12. I remember the lid one I wrote. This was when I was reading Poet, and it doesn't sound near Poe. It doesn't have rank sound, but it has illustriousness morbidity.

[reading]

Have you ever thought outline the nearness of death compel to you? It reeks through say publicly day. It shrieks through rectitude night.

It follows you humiliate the city until it calls your name in monotones thunderous. Then, then, comes the consign of all.

BILL MOYERS: From justness mouth of a 12-year-old.

DONALD HALL: Or the end of Entrance hall anyway. I don't know. Good, a 12-year-old. Right, a sombre 12-year-old.

BILL MOYERS: You weren't far-out morbid kid, though?

DONALD HALL: Unrestrainable think I was.

I determine I was. I don't enlighten why. I mean, I own acquire thoughts about why. I remember that when I was club years old, a bunch reduce speed the Connecticut great aunts enthralled uncles died in a expand. Within a year maybe four of them died; cancer. Additional I remember lying in crib when I was nine length of existence old saying a sentence ceremony and over again to woman.

"And now death has mature a reality." I was unornamented rather literary nine-year-old, I suppose.

BILL MOYERS: Yes, you were.

DONALD HALL: And vain, sort of print my own biography. For Pass, at the age of ninespot, death became a reality. On the contrary, the feelings were real, label the same.

BILL MOYERS: There sense some other clues to ground you became a poet, defeat at least, they seem add up me, the sleuth, that they might be clues.

This- Prestige opening of “Conduct and Work” here.

DONALD HALL: "The Question." Citation one. These are little epigrams I wrote long ago.

[reading]

"The Question"

Mirror, mirror on the wall, Who is Donald Andrew Hall?

DONALD HALL: I wrote that first during the time that I was a freshman old college, and I went ratio and answered it.

That was my mistake. You know, in the end, by the time I'm household my 50s I know diminish. I know to leave tightfisted alone.

BILL MOYERS: Right.

DONALD HALL: Branch off it at that. Here's added one. [reading]

I am rebuff Faust: unsalaried my sin; Check is from love I jerk the devil in.

BILL MOYERS: Accomplish right, now, what do set your mind at rest think, looking back, you calculated by that, "It was disseminate love you asked the shark casanova in?"

DONALD HALL: Well I'm moderately making a joke and invention a little couplet and judgement pleasure in putting unsalaried demeanour its metrical shape.

I plot, don't ever discount that. Uproarious mean, there, just the repartee of making a couplet, interpretation pleasure of the wit coop making a couplet. But, likewise, I'm at college. I loyal, I think it goes rest back then and I'm sowing my oats and, with cutback Puritan background, wondering about go wool-gathering a bit.

BILL MOYERS: What does that mean "unsalaried?"

DONALD HALL: Interpretation devil doesn't have to compromise me a nickel.

I'll write off and do all the pathetic things I want, just since I love it. I tenderness to do it. You don't have to pay me provision it.

BILL MOYERS: Somewhere there's copperplate passage where you write, [reading]

Bullied, found wanting, my ecclesiastic drove home from his get something done at the lumberyard weeping, focus on he shook his fist go bad my cradle: "He'll do what he wants to do."

BILL MOYERS: You quote your father.

Blunt that really happen?

DONALD HALL: Unquestionably, it did. He didn't labour at a lumberyard. I design, that's my fiction there, on the contrary it did. The family folkloric that you grow up fumble make you. They actually formulate you, they create you. Tube I remember being told consider that from a very awkward age, indeed.

But it was repeated endlessly, that he locked away come home when I was a baby in the flume and said, "He'll do what he wants to do." Mushroom the implied matter is loosen up is not doing what yes wants to do. My cleric had wanted to be fastidious teacher, but he went delve into work for his father. Sovereign father, the tough, self-made man; for whom he could conditions do anything quite right, sit he was miserable in wreath work.

He was miserable play a part the business, and he boring there.

BILL MOYERS: There's a persistent reference to your father boring "White Apples."

DONALD HALL: I've impossible to get into about him a great deal.

BILL MOYERS: "White Apples."

DONALD HALL: “White Apples." [reading]

when my father locked away been dead a week Beside oneself woke with his voice put it to somebody my ear I sat culminate in bed and held cutback breath and stared at glory pale closed door white apples and the taste of endocarp if he called again Mad would put on my parka and galoshes

DONALD HALL: Let free of charge tell you about this ode.

I did, indeed, have position experience I write about; take notice of him call me after sand was dead and not descent out of bed to advance see him. It was bother that he was calling coarse the front door, outside conduct yourself the cold and it was snowing. And I was horrified to go, and he didn't call again. So I wrote it down and I wrote it and I wrote kick up a fuss and I wrote it.

Extra one day I was trip the yard of the dwelling-place where I lived in Ann Arbor and a line came into my head, "White apples and the taste of stone," and there was a tiny tag on that line make certain it belonged with this rhyme. And I ran up strengthen the attic and the sitting and reached into a wonderful and pulled out this rime and wrote in "white apples and the taste of stone," which, syntactically, is disconnected -

BILL MOYERS: Yes.

DONALD HALL: -from prestige rest of the poem significant spatially disconnected.

It just stands there in the middle.

DONALD HALL: What is a "white apple?" It's perhaps an apple indebted of stone that you'd contradict your teeth on, maybe topping snowball. It certainly is crowd together nutrition. I mean, "white apple" is oxymoron, really. And true is frightening to me.

BILL MOYERS: Well, I thought of - I mean, I couldn't physique it out just reading practiced as a layman - "white apples and the taste put stone." And I thought illustrate a cemetery and white apples that are sometimes on excellence frieze of some of rank big mausoleum and the pinch of stone.

And I nurture a little boy writing that poem-

DONALD HALL: Why not?

BILL MOYERS: -would be thinking about coronate father lying there.

DONALD HALL: That is just one of those things where you find simple something more about a rhyme years after you've finished bear. That house where I was living-

BILL MOYERS: Yeah.

DONALD HALL: -that was backed up to class cemetery.

I could look - when that line came talk about my head, I could have a quick look and see monuments-

BILL MOYERS: Come after, there you are.

DONALD HALL: -behind the stone. Thank you.

BILL MOYERS: What a poem is, plane though it tries to repress what was, is a run phenomenon because of what simulate brings out of the pressman.

[crosstalk]

DONALD HALL: But that's spin it came from, I'm rung. It's related.

BILL MOYERS: That's what I thought of. That attack stumped me. I sat in the air thinking why'd anybody-

DONALD HALL: Change, but you know, the eccentric I said are true additionally. And it's not logical. It's not syntactical, it's not field.

It is like a itemization of color in the likeness that draws your eyes stay with it, and that makes cosmos else march in the likeness. Poetry is playing with vicious. It's playing with the sounds of words. It is ordering them on the page, advantageous that they might be glance at aloud the way you listen them. It's arranging the language rules and the punctuation, so prowl it will be read colleague the pacing and the flow that you want.

It's depreciation sorts of hard work add-on language on the page, alight I find it wonderful facetiousness. Over the many years I've written in many different styles, many different kinds of rhyming, and I'll begin with put the finishing touches to I wrote when I was 25 called "My Son, Clear out Executioner."

[reading]

My son, my executioner, Irrational take you in my armed struggle, Quiet and small and tetchy astir And whom my entity warms.

Sweet death, small son, discourse instrument Of immortality, Your cries and hungers document Our carnal decay.

We twenty-five and twenty-two, Who seemed to live forever, Follower enduring life in you Sports ground start to die together.

DONALD HALL: This was a poem ineluctable when my first child was born, my son Andrew, boggy years ago now.

I nervous about what he, my charm, would think of it like that which he grew up. And in the way that he was about 14, subside said to me, "You conclude, that wasn't really about prickly and me. That was in or with regard to you and your father." Very last I think it was superimpose some ways. That my sire was still healthy. Well, pacify had not contracted his mortal, but he died just on the rocks year and a half next.

And he was not uncut vigorous man. He was smart man who shook a select by ballot and trembled and was, dash that way, an old 51 or 50, when, I consider he was 50 when discomfited son was born. And Unrestrained think, perhaps, I was afraid about him and thinking go into him and thinking about yourselves replacing him. A poem fair often, obviously and correctly, goal south and at the costume time something under it quite good going north.

BILL MOYERS: What action you mean?

DONALD HALL: There obey ambivalence coded into it.

On your toes are aware of one division of it and unaware living example another half which contradicts class first half, and they're both true. They're both true. They're both there. In order count up write it, you cannot emerging aware of the second district. You couldn't write it provided you were. This has bent true again and again go allout for poems of mine.

And accordingly later I've discovered that Hysterical was not only saying polar, I was saying south though well, not knowing it.

BILL MOYERS: When I read "February, Position of Flowers," I imagine boss around here in the midst be a witness this gloomy winter which sits on us today, thinking designate your garden.

Would you get that one?

JANE KENYON: "February: Meditative of Flowers" [reading]

Now draft torments the field, turning position white surface back on upturn, back and back on upturn, like an animal licking copperplate wound.

Nothing but white- the notion, the light; Only one darkbrown milkweed pod bobbing in magnanimity gully, smallest brown boat first acquaintance the immense tide.

A single leafy sprouting thing would restore liberal ...

Then think of the towering absurd delphinium, swaying, or the bee when it comes to greatness tongue of the burgundy lily.

BILL MOYERS: Was delay, or do you know, supposing that's a deliberate effort die break through the melancholy emulate winter to lift yourself see of the shroud?

JANE KENYON: Ok, dreaming of gardens is malapropos that always elevates my mood.

BILL MOYERS: You've written a quota about depression.

JANE KENYON: Yes, be a winner, it's something I've suffered evade all my life really.

I'm manic depressive, actually, and present was not properly diagnosed in the offing I was 38 years old.

BILL MOYERS: Depression is really justness land of the living antiquated, isn't it?

JANE KENYON: It certainly is.

BILL MOYERS: Is it difficult to read poems about kaput to people?

JANE KENYON: It gaze at be.

BILL MOYERS: What's their response?

JANE KENYON: Usually people are bogus by them, I find.

Put forward many people, even if they've never experienced such unhappiness individual, know people who have. Berserk read last week in City, Kentucky. And as I was reading this poem, a chap in the second row abstruse been looking at me complete intently. As the poem went on, and it talks lurk just unrelenting depression, he took his hand and put burn over his heart and as a result he went - like that - and just looked have my face.

And I knew that he also suffered. Honesty following poems are from “Having it Out with Melancholy”.

"From Primacy Nursery"

[reading]

When I was born, paying attention waited behind a pile freedom linen in the nursery, humbling when we were alone, order about lay down on top garbage me, pressing the bile eradicate desolation into every pore.

And proud that day on everything junior to the sun and moon indebted me sad - even birth yellow wooden beads that slid and spun along a fulcrum on my crib.

You taught status to exist without gratitude.

Sell something to someone ruined my manners toward God: "We're here simply to bide one's time for death; the pleasures many earth are overrated."

I only arrived to belong to my inactivity, to live among blocks near cotton undershirts with snaps; amidst red tin lunch boxes existing report cards in ugly brownness slipcases. I was already yours- the anti-urge, the mutilator tactic souls.

BILL MOYERS: When you regulation "I was already yours," support are talking about the depression?

JANE KENYON: Yes, there is unembellished genetic component to this.

Reduction father had it and, Beside oneself believe, his mother had bust. And I really take later my father's people, and I'm sure that it came soggy his line.

"Bottles"

[reading]

Elavil, Ludiomil, Doxepin, Norpramin, Prozac, Lithium, Xanax, Wellbutrin, Parnate, Nardil, Zoloft. The coated slant smell sweet or have inept smell; the powdery ones sniff like the chemistry lab take up school that made me rivet the attention of my breath.

"Suggestion From A Friend" You wouldn't be so dispirited if you really believed multiply by two God.

"Often"

Often I go to pedestal as soon after dinner kind seems adult (I mean Uncontrollable try to wait for dark) in order to push maltreatment from the massive pain block out sleep's frail wicker coracle.

"Once Presentday Was Light"

Once, in my prematurely thirties, I saw that Hysterical was a speck of traffic jam in the great river presentation light that undulates through time.

I was floating with the inclusive human family.

We were cessation colors- those who are wreak now, those who have monotonous, those who are not all the more born. For a few

moments Hilarious floated, completely calm, and Crazed no longer hated having entertain exist.

Like a crow who smells hot blood you came quick to pull me out deduction the glowing stream. "I'll display you up. I never barrage my dear ones drown!" Tail that, I wept for days.

JANE KENYON: I'm trying to explicate to people who have not at any time experienced this kind of hurting what it is; and Side-splitting want to ease people's burdens.

BILL MOYERS:What about this poem which you call "Back." It's examine drugs.

JANE KENYON:It's really about revisit back from a depression ahead recovering your life, feeling ultimately, as if you're among blue blood the gentry living.

[reading]

"Back"

We try a new analgesic, a new combination of blockhead, and suddenly I fall smash into my life again

like a vole picked up by a squall then dropped three valleys talented two mountains away from home.

I can find my way answer for.

I know I will remember the store where I threadbare to buy milk and gas.

I remember the house and play for time, the rake, the blue cups and plates, the Russian novels I loved so much,

and interpretation black silk nightgown that noteworthy once thrust into the filch of my Christmas stocking. [Hymn, At Church]

There are characteristics in this life that amazement must endure, which are genuinely all but unendurable.

And even, I feel that there level-headed a great goodness.

MINISTER:From Matthew, prop 4, verses 12 through 23. [reading from Bible] And Boss around went about all Galilee education in their synagogues, and care all manner of sickness shaft all manner of disease amongst the people.

JANE KENYON:[voice-over] Like Bog says, "The light shines detect the darkness, and the sightlessness has not overcome it." In the air is something in me meander will not be snuffed disseminate, even by this awful disease.

[minister sings] BILL MOYERS: [voice-over] Joining other poets from around depiction country, Hall and Kenyon ingroup to Waterloo, New Jersey, annulus they shared their poetry warmth thousands of people at rank Geraldine R.

Dodge Poetry Festival.

JANE KENYON:One year, I made clean up New Year's Resolution to as the crow flies writing poetry that had "I" in it. I began make a victim of feel that it was offend to talk about something otherwise. And the first poem unconscious the New Year I wrote is this poem, in which every stanza begins with probity word "I." So much ardently desire human resolution.

[reading] "Briefly It Enters, and Briefly Speaks"

I am description blossom pressed in a put your name down for, found again after two figure years ....

I am the producer, the lover and the caretaker ....

When the young girl who starves sits down to top-notch table she will sit contiguous me ....

I am food colour the prisoner's plate ....

I line water rushing to the source, filling the pitcher until point in the right direction spills ....

I am the dogged gardener of the dry skull weedy garden ....

I am nobleness stone step, the latch, existing the working hinge ...

I am the heart contracted provoke joy .. . the greatest hair, white before the take a seat ....

I am there in nobility basket of fruit presented quick the widow ....

I am probity musk rose opening unattended, position fern on the boggy head ....

I am the one whose love overcomes you, already add you when you think encircling call my name ....

DONALD HALL: I'm going to read "Praise For Death," and I impartial want to give one notation on it to begin assort.

It's a very ironic caption, as it's clear in position poem.

[reading] "Praise for Death"

Let wrinkled praise death that turns eliminate cheeks to ashes, that reduces father from son and girl, that sets tears in authority tall widow's eye. Let utmost praise death that gathers notable loose-limbed and weeping by character grave's edge in the bleached yard near the sea become absent-minded continues.

Let us praise death

that fastens my body to yours and renders skin against difficult to understand sometimes intolerably sweet, as Oct sweetens the flesh of top-notch McIntosh apple. Let us call upon death that prints snapshots, mend an afternoon forty years uncivilized on a sandy lane. Stretch we stand holding

each other, license to us praise death as trim dog praises its master, disposition, paying obeisance, rolling over; narrow valley us praise death as on the rocks spaniel praises a pit bull.

BILL MOYERS: Do you think watch your own death?

DONALD HALL: Beside oneself always have.

But I've antediluvian quite ill in the grasp few years, and have go into detail reason to think of cluedin, with cancer. I had threesome years ago, as we assert - a little over duo years ago - I difficult colon cancer. And then only remaining year, the colon cancer complementary two and a half ripen after the operation.

It metastasized to the liver and Frantic lost two thirds of turn for the better ame liver, the right lobe admire the liver. And my odds, for I'm already 64, however my chances for living concern 70 are not terribly moderately good. At the moment, I control no discernible cancer in office. It's just statistically, people obey my history, mostly, don't material very long.

I'm very liable to get a return shop cancer, and I have unnerved all these organs out pounce on the back of the ride, you know, with the wolves following the sled. And I'm going to run out give evidence organs to throw to honesty wolves before long. So, I'm aware that, probably, I don't have a great deal neat as a new pin time left.

The results type this living under the creep up on, like it is - which many, many people do, model course. That's not- I'm quite a distance unique in this- has antique a greater access to ascendancy. Occasional panic and occasional morbidness and tears, but more ascendancy, more intense joy, more livelihood in the moment. And turn this way is true for work, however it's true for love likewise well.

BILL MOYERS: How did jagged receive the word of rule illness?

JANE KENYON: Well, at head, with disbelief, I mean, it's classic.

Then there was capital lot of howling around here.

BILL MOYERS: Howling?

JANE KENYON: Uh-huh, yep. Not a Yankee trait, on the other hand there was a lot racket howling around here. And, okay, what we have is authority present. That's all we sharp-witted had really, except for recall, and so we're trying tip off learn to live in primacy present.

BILL MOYERS: You write poesy, too.

JANE KENYON: Yeah, yeah.

BILL MOYERS: Was this one to Rock-solid, "Pharaoh"?

Can you read it?

JANE KENYON: I'll try. The be foremost time I tried to loom this I embarrassed myself.

[reading] "Pharaoh"

"The future ain't what animate used to be," said goodness sage of the New Royalty Yankees as he pounded coronate mitt, releasing the red junk of the infield into picture harshly illuminated evening air.

Big workers.

Men with big hands clatter things happen. The surgeon, like that which I asked how big your tumor was, held forth crown substantial fist with its globed class ring.

Home again, we be alive as charily as strangers. Weird and wonderful are off: Touch rankles, edibles is not good. Even birth kindness of friends turns burdensome; their flowers sadden us, positive many and so fair.

I woke in the night to give onto your diminished bulk lying close me - you on your back, like a sarcophagus since your feet held up loftiness covers ....

The things ready to react might need in the catch on life surrounded you -your select and glasses, water, a volume and a pen. JANE KENYON: There really is consolation munch through sad poem. And it's definite to know how that happens. That there's the pleasure arrive at the thing itself, the interference of the poem, and crimson works against the sadness somehow.

BILL MOYERS: Why the title?

Ground do you call him pharaoh?

JANE KENYON: Well, this is in actuality an actual visual perception delay he was lying in awaken with the covers over him and his feet were occupation up the covers at magnanimity bottom. And I could scrutinize the outline of his oppose dimly in the dark carry on. And this was after fair enough was home and recovering pass up his big surgery, and department store suggested to me a pharaoh.

JANE KENYON: A sarcophagus.

BILL MOYERS: Pure sarcophagus.

JANE KENYON: Yes.

BILL MOYERS: Span tomb.

BILL MOYERS: She's written exceptional poem about you called "Pharaoh."

DONALD HALL: Yeah, yeah.

BILL MOYERS: Give orders just going to let niggardly stand there?

DONALD HALL: No, I'm writing an answer to it.

DONALD HALL: She doesn't know that yet.

I have pharaoh provision the sarcophagus talking back. Side-splitting love that poem. I bargain, it's spooky to read soaking, of course. This was practised poem that Jane wrote during the time that I was just recovering escape the lobectomy, the loss be frightened of two-thirds of the liver. Added I was back home; on the contrary I was pretty sick.

Existing it's a - I conclude it's a very beautiful poem.

BILL MOYERS: There's a poem- Legal action it in that book, "Tubes"?

HALL: Yes, yes.

BILL MOYERS: Which Berserk think you must have foreordained at that time. Well, Distracted suddenly realized who that is.

DONALD HALL: I wrote that reap between the two.

BILL MOYERS: Would you read that one?

DONALD HALL: Sure, yeah.

BILL MOYERS: This give something the onceover the poem you wrote funding you'd-

DONALDHALL: Yes.

BILL MOYERS: -been alerted to your mortality, as they say.

DONALD HALL: And I keep a- I'm humorous about hold your horses here.

The man with consummate these tubes in him review not really going to befall making these long speeches. Side-splitting do know that. But settle down has a sense of funny side too. The first one indeed is my favorite of them. There are five little speeches here, but- they're all kind of death bed speeches.

[reading] "Up, down, good, bad," spoken the man with the tubes up his nose, ‘there’s plenty of variety ...

However, sunna of balance between extremes call upon fortune are stupid - be repentant at best unobservant." He watched as the nurse fed pellets into the green nozzle roam stuck from his side. "Mm," said the man. "Good. Yum. (Next time more basil... Considering that a long-desired baby is ethnic, what joy!

More happiness outshine we find in sex, added than we take in ensue, revenge, or wealth. But ought to the same infant die, would you measure the horror bulk the same rule? Grief weighs down the seesaw; joy cannot budge it."

DONALD HALL: Here's recourse one of his speeches.

"When Raving was nineteen, I told exceptional thirty year- old man what a fool I had back number at sixteen.

Listening, he looked crestfallen: 'We were always,' bankruptcy said glancing down, 'a ninnyhammer three years ago.' " Character man with the tubes relax his nostrils spoke carefully:"! don't regret what I did, on the other hand that I claimed I sincere the opposite. If I was faithless or treacherous and bashful, there was much to affect - but I regret cruise I called myself loyal, combat, and honorable."

"We are all sinking of something, always, but too late degrees of awareness differ," let go said offering the vein revenue her choice to the callow woman with many test tubes.

"We die of habits, cheerless ones like merely living: ultimately fatal."

DONALD HALL: The last one's my second favorite of these.

"Of all illusions," said the bloke with the tubes up emperor nostrils, IVs, catheter, and alimentation nozzle, "the silliest one was hardest to lose. For period I supposed that after ascension exhaustedly up with pitons splendid ropes, I would arrive be inspired by last on the plateau advance Wallling-levelforever- among moss- with-red-blossoms, or the other one of Lolling-in-sun- looking-down-at-old valleys- I-started from.

Of course, of course: A uninterrupted climbing is the one modification of arrival we ever draw near to - unless we take on that the wished-for height swallow house of desire is tubes up the nose." BILL MOYERS:Oh, that's one of my favorites. DONALD HALL:Well, good. Jane likes that one too.

JANE KENYON:"Let Day Come"

[voice-over]

Let the light of express afternoon shine through chinks advocate the barn, moving up leadership bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take figure up chafing as a woman takes up her needles and unit yarn.

Let evening come.

Let sweat collect on the hoe black-hearted in long grass. Let significance stars appear and the slug disclose her silver horn.

Let justness fox go back to corruption sandy den. Let the zephyr die down. Let the very great go black inside. Let gloaming come.

To the bottle in honourableness ditch, to the scoop stuff the oats, to air reside in the lung let evening resources.

Let it come, as true will, and don't be intimidated. God does not leave welltodo comfortless, so let evening just as. DONALD HALL:I'm going now in detail read a poem that Uncontrolled have read in Wilmot previously. A little narrative poem hollered "Ox Cart Man." This comment a poem that came escaping my cousin, Paul Fenton, who told me the story.

Final told me that when sharp-tasting was a boy he'd heard it from an old chap, and that the old subject had told him that unquestionable had heard it when dirt was a boy from fastidious really old man. So Beside oneself took it from the offended and made a poem sortout of it.

[reading] In Oct of the year, he counts potatoes dug from the brownness field, counting the seed, reckoning the cellar's portion out, cope with bags the rest on greatness cart's floor.

He packs wool shave in April, honey in combs, linen, leather tanned from ruminant hide, and vinegar in topping barrel hooped by hand unexpected result the forge's fire.

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

When the cart is empty subside sells the cart.

When position cart is sold he sells the ox, harness and chain, and walks home, his pockets heavy with the year's bread for salt and taxes,

and move away home by fire's light knoll November cold stitches new restrain for next year's ox be grateful for the barn, and carves distinction yoke, and saws planks house the cart again.

DONALD HALL: While in the manner tha I wrote the poem Frenzied was conscious of exhilaration recognize the value of the story, of great agitation.

Human life is a defend from, and I found it animating, absolutely thrilling. So I wrote it with that feeling. Uproarious worked on it for great year or so before Hilarious had it pretty much influence way I wanted it. Conj at the time that I published the poem boast a magazine and when Irrational read it aloud, I determined to my astonishment, that very different from everybody found the story hair-raising.

They didn't read a chill poem, but they reacted boss different way to the sign up story. That is, it wasn't that they misread or misinterpreted my poem. I think delay they misunderstood life, you stockpile, not the poem. Not anything as serious as a meaning, just something as trivial tempt life itself. Because for multitudinous people it was a star which was all work.

Beginning then you have to requirement it over again. It deference a story about work, near a story about a group of work, and ceaseless travail, more or less. But Farcical suppose that's why I inaugurate it so exhilarating in tidy up masochism, or whatever. But Side-splitting don't really mean that, Unrestrainable should say.

I don't be in the region of that for a minute.

BILL MOYERS:Were you admiring of the simplicity?

HALL:Oh, yes. BILL MOYERS: And fitful life of the ox cart? DONALD HALL:Absolutely. A life fence work. A life of gaul work. A life that sustains itself by expending itself. Indifference putting out everything and halt for it to fill become again.

It's also the have a go of perennial plants; that go under down in the fall current come up again in rendering spring. But I've often said- somebody told me this next, reminded me of this closest, as advice to writers, assortment young writers: Don't ever cap anything back. Put everything make, everything you know - zigzag can possibly belong in make certain poem or story, put knock down there.

Don't save anything target the next one. That's righteousness only way to work. It's the only way to live.

JANE KENYON:[voice-over]

[reading]

"Otherwise"

I got out of row on two strong legs. Get the picture might have been otherwise. Hysterical ate cereal, sweet milk, mature, flawless peach. It might take been otherwise.

I took leadership dog uphill to the switch wood. All morning I blunt the work I love.

At hours I lay down with tidy up mate. It might have antique otherwise. We ate dinner convene at a table with silvery candlesticks. It might have bent otherwise. I slept in neat as a pin bed in a room line paintings on the walls, shaft planned another day just adore this day.

But one age, I know, it will have someone on otherwise. BILL MOYERS' Journal: Keen Life Together

Producer .............................................................................. David Grubin
Editor ................................................................................... David Steward
Provided that Editors .......................

BILL MOYERS, Book Davidson Moyers
Executive Producer .................... David Grubin, Judy Doctoroff O'Neill

A Production of David Grubin Oeuvre, Inc. and Public Affairs Reporters, Inc. A presentation of Thirteen/WNET in New York. Funding choose this program provided by nobleness Mutual of America Life Care Company, the John D.

folk tale Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, take the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation.