Gassho. I am so appreciative of deep listening. Thanks for your comments on Valentine.
By the way, I love the Poets.org website. I didn’t know they broke writers and workshops down by state. Good to know.
I did stumble on an interview on the same website with Donald Hall, Flying Revision’s Flag . Insightful – about the art of revision. Can be applied to all forms of writing.
Hall seems to be a serious revisionist. He said when he was twenty-five a poem took six months or a year to revise. Now, it takes two years to five. I find revising a lot about letting go. What to keep. What to drop. I’m starting to be able to feel in my body when something isn’t right. What I do from there, well, that’s the challenge.
Here’s another interview, Donald Hall, in conversation with Judith Moore, I found with Hall from 1998, four years after his wife, Jane Kenyon, died of leukemia. As writers we have to hold everything – eventually, we write it down.
Life at Eagle Pond: the Poetry of Jane Kenyon and Donald Hall
Friday, February 16th, 2007
I only read the first interview, the one about revising. A few things struck me:
The interviewer was masterful at carrying out the inquiry on revision. I kept thinking, “Donald Hall is going to snap off the interviewer’s head, this revision questioning is just not stopping.” Yet, every question brought out a deepening of the topic.
I was surprised by the reference to Ginsberg and Ginsberg’s claim that some of his poems are spontaneous. I think Natalie’s approach is for spontaneity, first thought, and not revision, but I don’t know that for sure. I know she does revise; she’s showed us examples of revision on current works. But not to the extent Donald Hall does.
Donald Hall mentioned that when he writes essays or other prose, sometimes he will only revise four or so times, and that in general, poetry requires much more revision than anything else.
I found it interesting the reference to how important it is to show others your work and to have critical feedback. How some people lie about your work without meaning to or perhaps even knowing it. And how he sometimes won’t show anyone else his work until he’s looked at it himself for about a year.
Also, how he’ll get to the point where he knows something isn’t right but doesn’t know what that is. Often, that’s when he’ll show his work to someone else.
And finally, this interview and knowing Donald Hall’s process makes me feel better about my own. When I wrote my essay for Natalie’s last workshop, I was so worried about overworking the essay. Yet, the revisions seemed to start making a difference. Not that the essay is ready yet for submission, but at least I feel more confident that revision is not a bad word. I had started to worry that revision was not good, that first thought was good. Yet, so much crap had come out of the raw practice, and it takes a while to understand what is good and what is not.
Thanks for sharing this interview. I’ll try to read the other one soon.
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Ooooo…I just read the second interview, which was a synopsis of an interview. I suggest we start a reading list and to it we add:
Donald Hall, Without
Jane Kenyon, Otherwise
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I really liked the interviews, too. I love learning about writers’ lives, especially good writers.
I agree – we should start a reading list with:
Donald Hall, Without
Jane Kenyon, Otherwise
We can add to it along the way as we read new books. Maybe we can also add our favorite books we read over the last year. I’d definitely put Stoner on the list. And one of the James Baldwin books. Maybe both.
Any others?
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Re: Valentine & Donald Hall
Yes yes and yes.
One of the best parts of taking a class is to have the structure of a
reading list. If we can share titles, authors that we have loved, we
do a great service to the lineage of writers, to ourselves.
I’d add:
Play It As It Lays, Joan Didion
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Two memoirs that I loved, but I ask myself, since Natalie asked me (about one of them, anyway), Are they really good?
A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small in Mooreland Indiana by Haven Kimmel. This one I didn’t mention to Natalie in terms of thinking about it for her memoir workshop. I loved it, though. It was the voice, I think.
Let’s Not Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood by Alexandra Fuller.
Neither is on the “To Be Devoured” list; rather, the “Dessert, If You Have Room”. I’d love to hear what you think of these books. Are they good enough?
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Re: Valentine & Donald Hall – Alexandra Fuller
Alexandra Fuller has captured my interest. As a sidenote, she’s easy on the eyes. I read the essay about Wyoming and its writers on Salon.com. She did a lot of research. I visited Jackson Hole a long time ago in the eighties but would like to return. Liz has family near Cody, Wyoming. And a woman in the writing retreat last week lives near Laramie.
To rugged individualism.
Destination: Wyoming
Wide open space dotted with the occasional rodeo and watering hole — you’ll need more than Annie Proulx to make it through the long winter here.
By Alexandra Fuller
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Re: Valentine & Donald Hall – Haven Kimmel
Wow, I’m impressed with Haven Kimmel, too. I read an early interview, Bold Type: Conversation with Haven Kimmel where she talks about memoir and how she became a writer. Insightful.
“Who knew? Memoir is the voice of our common humanity, even in the most uncommon lives.” – Haven Kimmel
She’s also got a fan site:
http://www.purityofheart.org/
And here’s a radio interview on her new book, a sequel memoir to Zippy, – She Got Up Off the Couch from The State of Things archive at WUNC, North Carolina public radio:
http://www.ibiblio.org/wunc_archives/sot/index.php?p=526
Have fun!
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Hey, it was 14th Poet Laureate Donald Hall’s birthday yesterday, September 20th. He was born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1928. He was featured in The Writer’s Almanac. And I thought of his Revisionism and his relationship to Jane Kenyon when I listened to it.
See Forget Vonnegut – Jane Kenyon Lives On (LINK).
I also thought of how much we write about “sense of place” on red Ravine and about “going home” which he writes about as well. And who did we read in our poetry group last Friday night but Robert Frost!
See Robert Frost (Miles To Go) (LINK). Can you believe he met Robert Frost?
Here’s a blurb from TWA:
—He (Hall) started writing poems when he was a kid at his grandparents’ farm in New Hampshire. When he was 16, he went to a writing conference and met Robert Frost, and later that year, he published his first poetry.
….at the University of Michigan, he met another poet, Jane Kenyon, and they got married and moved back to his grandparents’ farm. He said that moving there was like “coming home to the place of language.”
….He still lives in New Hampshire and writes poetry in the bedroom where he slept as a boy. He said, “I see no reason to spend your life writing poems unless your goal is to write great poems.”
Love that quote. You can read the whole piece at the link below. And also a wonderful poem “The Wordsworth Effect” by Joyce Sutphen. Really worth the read.
The Writer’s Almanac – September 20th, 2008 (LINK)
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