Background
Daniel J. Hall was born in 1952 in the United States.
Amherst College
(The winning volume in the 1989 Yale Series of Younger Poe...)
The winning volume in the 1989 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is Hermit with Landscape by Daniel Hall. As James Merrill, distinguished poet and judge of the competition, has said: "Daniel Hall is a patient craftsman, a weigher of each word. Smaller and more lucid than their model, his imitations of life place no burden upon us; rather, their deftness lightens our step. Here mind once again outdances the monumental." Tidal A moth hove out of fog. All I heard was the incessant dissolving of the surf, attenuated, drawn through eggshell, bone and ash as through the walls of another room. After dark, before a glass, in a hall reeling with shadows, a pair of eyes resolved. At last they shone: they shone like phosphorescent moons. The winning volume in the 1989 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is Hermit with Landscape by Daniel Hall. As James Merrill, distinguished poet and judge of the competition, has said: "Daniel Hall is a patient craftsman, a weigher of each word. Smaller and more lucid than their model, his imitations of life place no burden upon us; rather, their deftness lightens our step. Here mind once again outdances the monumental." Tidal A moth hove out of fog. All I heard was the incessant dissolving of the surf, attenuated, drawn through eggshell, bone and ash as through the walls of another room. After dark, before a glass, in a hall reeling with shadows, a pair of eyes resolved. At last they shone: they shone like phosphorescent moons. The winning volume in the 1989 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is Hermit with Landscape by Daniel Hall. As James Merrill, distinguished poet and judge of the competition, has said: "Daniel Hall is a patient craftsman, a weigher of each word. Smaller and more lucid than their model, his imitations of life place no burden upon us; rather, their deftness lightens our step. Here mind once again outdances the monumental." Tidal A moth hove out of fog. All I heard was the incessant dissolving of the surf, attenuated, drawn through eggshell, bone and ash as through the walls of another room. After dark, before a glass, in a hall reeling with shadows, a pair of eyes resolved. At last they shone: they shone like phosphorescent moons. The winning volume in the 1989 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is Hermit with Landscape by Daniel Hall. As James Merrill, distinguished poet and judge of the competition, has said: "Daniel Hall is a patient craftsman, a weigher of each word. Smaller and more lucid than their model, his imitations of life place no burden upon us; rather, their deftness lightens our step. Here mind once again outdances the monumental." Tidal A moth hove out of fog. All I heard was the incessant dissolving of the surf, attenuated, drawn through eggshell, bone and ash as through the walls of another room. After dark, before a glass, in a hall reeling with shadows, a pair of eyes resolved. At last they shone: they shone like phosphorescent moons.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0300047339/?tag=2022091-20
1990
(Then You looked up vaguely or you didn’t—even the memory ...)
Then You looked up vaguely or you didn’t—even the memory is dying. Then you whole body breathed out, and the argument ended. Heaven surfaced about you like a glass tabletop, hard and cold. Whatever you do don’t turn me into poetry. Sorry: I am done crying about it but I am not done crying. An extended meditation on how death affects those left behind, Under Sleep is a skillfully understated, beautifully rendered elegy for the poet’s partner. Formally inventive and technically sophisticated, Daniel Hall attends to the power of death to haunt every perception. The poet’s voice registers as though he were walking on the bottom of the ocean, in a state of mind somewhere “under sleep,” in a kind of waking dream. In Hall’s hands, isolated moments of perception bloom into truly touching love elegies. The poems in Under Sleep were written over a period of ten years and, as a result, are densely interconnected, with lines and entire stanzas transplanted between different poems. Using styles ranging from free verse to sonnets, Sapphics, and rhymed haikus, Hall populates the book with literary and historical figures—Baudelaire, Pound, and Casanova—in poems set in China, the Middle East, Death Valley, and Italy. Throughout, the poetry is propelled by tension as the speaker struggles with his own better judgment—and against his lover’s wishes—to turn the loss of the beloved into art. Praise for Daniel Hall “Daniel Hall’s work reminds us that a poet’s sharp-sightedness, the whole business of ‘getting things right,’ is a matter of far more than accuracy. It’s a matter of—inescapably—thanksgiving.”—Brad Leithauser, New York Review of Books Then You looked up vaguely or you didn’t—even the memory is dying. Then you whole body breathed out, and the argument ended. Heaven surfaced about you like a glass tabletop, hard and cold. Whatever you do don’t turn me into poetry. Sorry: I am done crying about it but I am not done crying. An extended meditation on how death affects those left behind, Under Sleep is a skillfully understated, beautifully rendered elegy for the poet’s partner. Formally inventive and technically sophisticated, Daniel Hall attends to the power of death to haunt every perception. The poet’s voice registers as though he were walking on the bottom of the ocean, in a state of mind somewhere “under sleep,” in a kind of waking dream. In Hall’s hands, isolated moments of perception bloom into truly touching love elegies. The poems in Under Sleep were written over a period of ten years and, as a result, are densely interconnected, with lines and entire stanzas transplanted between different poems. Using styles ranging from free verse to sonnets, Sapphics, and rhymed haikus, Hall populates the book with literary and historical figures—Baudelaire, Pound, and Casanova—in poems set in China, the Middle East, Death Valley, and Italy. Throughout, the poetry is propelled by tension as the speaker struggles with his own better judgment—and against his lover’s wishes—to turn the loss of the beloved into art. Praise for Daniel Hall “Daniel Hall’s work reminds us that a poet’s sharp-sightedness, the whole business of ‘getting things right,’ is a matter of far more than accuracy. It’s a matter of—inescapably—thanksgiving.”—Brad Leithauser, New York Review of Books Then You looked up vaguely or you didn’t—even the memory is dying. Then you whole body breathed out, and the argument ended. Heaven surfaced about you like a glass tabletop, hard and cold. Whatever you do don’t turn me into poetry. Sorry: I am done crying about it but I am not done crying. An extended meditation on how death affects those left behind, Under Sleep is a skillfully understated, beautifully rendered elegy for the poet’s partner. Formally inventive and technically sophisticated, Daniel Hall attends to the power of death to haunt every perception. The poet’s voice registers as though he were walking on the bottom of the ocean, in a state of mind somewhere “under sleep,” in a kind of waking dream. In Hall’s hands, isolated moments of perception bloom into truly touching love elegies. The poems in Under Sleep were written over a period of ten years and, as a result, are densely interconnected, with lines and entire stanzas transplanted between different poems. Using styles ranging from free verse to sonnets, Sapphics, and rhymed haikus, Hall populates the book with literary and historical figures—Baudelaire, Pound, and Casanova—in poems set in China, the Middle East, Death Valley, and Italy. Throughout, the poetry is propelled by tension as the speaker struggles with his own better judgment—and against his lover’s wishes—to turn the loss of the beloved into art. Praise for Daniel Hall “Daniel Hall’s work reminds us that a poet’s sharp-sightedness, the whole business of ‘getting things right,’ is a matter of far more than accuracy. It’s a matter of—inescapably—thanksgiving.”—Brad Leithauser, New York Review of Books.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226313328/?tag=2022091-20
2007
Daniel J. Hall was born in 1952 in the United States.
Hall devoted all his career to writing. His first book, Hermit with Landscape was published in 1990, the second, Strange Relation, was published in 1995. His latest book is Under Sleep of 2007.
During his career, Hall was also a judge for the James Laughlin awards. Currently, he lives in Amherst, Massachusetts and is a Writer-in-Residence at Amherst College. He is on the editorial board of the literary magazine The Common, based at Amherst College.
(The winning volume in the 1989 Yale Series of Younger Poe...)
1990(Then You looked up vaguely or you didn’t—even the memory ...)
2007