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Summary:
Eagle Pond Farm, familiar even to casual readers of poet Donald Hall (author of 13 volumes of poetry spanning over 40 years), constitutes his spiritual and geographic center. He moved there permanently in 1975 after marrying the young and talented poet Jane Kenyon. His long relationship to Eagle Pond Farm and the creative haven the two poets created gives Without a special poignancy. It is where, in 1995, Jane Kenyon died.
The facts are hard but simple. In 1994, Jane Kenyon--who at 46 was beginning to enjoy the growing recognition of her work--was diagnosed with leukemia. Kenyon and Hall opted for the harrowing bone marrow transplant, to be performed in Seattle. It was not successful, and 12 weeks later, she was dead. Hall began drafting Without during the procedure and subsequent treatment, an act almost impossible to imagine--or perhaps for a poet, the only act possible in the face of what for most would be unspeakable. The magnitude of such suffering might indeed explain the collection's flatness of tone, as if grief can be touched only across great distances.
However restrained the pieces, Hall's gaze is fearless. Shifts in voice (he writes both in first and third person) create a tension that pulls the reader forward, as if compelled to consume this moving, raw account in one sitting. The quality of reader attention is more akin to what one gives a story. Narrative elements include a terse account of the bone-marrow transplant and Kenyan's subsequent radiation treatments ("It was as if she capped the Chernobyl pile with her body"), and it's here that the poems become almost unbearable to read.
Without captures the tedium of dying, jolted by surges of rage and "witless" love. Numbly, it lists the flinty details of Kenyon's last days, spent choosing the poems for her last volume, Otherwise: New & Selected Poems. It describes the moment of her dying in a way that makes one wonder if the ultimate experience of intimacy is to watch the beloved die, to be the one to close her eyes. "Back home from the grave," Hall writes toward the end of this volume, "behind my desk I made / a gallery of Janes," but it can be said that every poem presents a facet of his wife while dying, accruing finally to a gallery of love and grief.
There are some distinguishing jolts to our familiar concepts about death as in, for example, the poem showing the couple, with their minister, praying and holding hands. And when they prayed, "grace was evident / but not the comfort of mercy or reprieve / The embodied figure / on the cross still twisted under the sun." By and large, however, it's a volume not remarkable for bold imagery or shocking connections; rather for the expression of raw grief that follows, unwelcome, all of our necessary losses. --Hollis Giammatteo
Customer Reviews:
Average Customer Rating:
I am familiar..
Customer Rating:
I am very familiar with the author of Without..I have read the book The Best Day the Worst Day. This book may be short but every one of Donald Hall's poems is packed with a punch. When I sat down to read it I was absorbed..I didn't put it down until I had read the whole thing. Donald is an awesome writer and I will be looking to buy other books of his poems. The day I found this book in one of my favorite bookstores I picked up a book of poems by Jane Kenyon--that is who Donald is writing about in this collection of poems--and the book The Best Day the Worst Day is about his wife's illness.
Very moving
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This is a deeply personal, moving account of one man coming to terms with his wife's illness and her eventual death. His poetry is deeply affecting, beautiful, and poignant. I highly recommend this for anyone.
A Wonderful Memorial
Customer Rating:
I wanted to read this collection of poems because I was so moved by Mr. Hall's memoir of his life with Jane Kenyon, The Best Day The Worst Day. The poems here are inspired by the same sequence of events; that is, Ms. Kenyon's death from leukemia. This unity of purpose alone, so rare in poetry collections, gives the book incredible power. Of course, this unity is not enough. Fortunately, despite the sad theme, there are a number of wonderful poems here.
I found the poems in the first half of the book--those leading up to Ms. Kenyon's death--the best. "Song for Lucy," "The Porcelain Couple," "The Ship Pounding," and, especially, "A Beard for Blue Pantry" and "Blues for Polly" very moving, filled with great images like "Jane made bread so honest/it once went blue in the pantry//overnight in a heat wave" (Pantry) and "She sang blue: soulful, erotic,/skeptical, knowing everything/turns out bad in the end." Not surprisingly, blue is a linking color here.
Mr. Hall also intersperses a poem, "Her Long Illness," throughout the first half of the book. It's a risky strategy but it works well. Some of the best lines in the book come in this poem.
I didn't feel the second half of the book, which focuses more on Mr. Hall's loneliness, stood up as well as the first. The title poem, the first of the aftermath poems, is the weakest in the book. There are some passages in the various "Letters" poems that make up most of the second half that are very nice (my favorite, from "Letter in the New Year": "If someone had told us then/you would die in nineteen years,/would it have sounded/like almost enough time?") but, for the most part, they are very uneven. I was also put off by some of the semi-profane and sexual language in some of these poems. Not that these experiences aren't appropriate but they didn't ring true with the rest of the work.
It may be that the first half has the advantage of the tension of Ms. Kenyon's illness which dissolves into a less satisfying depression and loneliness in the second half. Perhaps my knowledge of the memoir interfered somewhat with my reading of some of the poems. Still, as a whole, this is definitely an excellent collection.
Gripping tale of a great love told through poems
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This book is considered to be one of the greatest poetic accomplishments in American history. Read it with a box of tissues.
"Dying is simple....What's worse is.....the seperation."
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I heard Donald Hall read passages of Whitman's Leaves of Grass at the 2005 National Book Festival on the Mall in DC. I knew nothing of him, his work, or his love of Jane Kenyon. I did know his voice rang true to the soul I possess. I can still here his voice over the sound of helicopter blades that plagued the readings in each tent. Compelled to read his work I finally gave into the need to buy one of his works and so I bought three.
"Without" is a journey of loss. Each poem is a step during the journey of Jane Kenyon's illness, passing, and Donald Hall's experience of loss. His pain, confusion, and helplessness are mirrored in every line and in every word with in the pages of "Without".
By the time I got to page nine I was crying, not for Jane Kenyon but for Donald Hall. The book doesn't show case only loss but devotion. The memories he shares of Jane are clouded with the simple things that brought him contentment and careless pleasure. How often do you see the simple things in your life and overlook the pleasure that exists in the act of observation? Donald Hall looks back on the pleasure of contentment watching his wife taste the sauce that will be served with dinner and the act of bringing in groceries. He tells us of the ravishing beauty she grew into in her 40's. Donald Hall reminds us of hope with in the pages of "Without".
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