Organizing your writing life

HOORAY...DONALD HALL! One of my favorite poets, Donald Hall, has been named the new Poet Laureate of America. Yeah, yeah...he's accessible. Go ahead and get over it now. The work he wrote after the death of his wife, the poet Jane Kenyon, is some of the most moving and visceral work I've ever read (Remembered happiness is agony/so is remembered agony). I also admire him for his work on the NEA board and encouraging the body not to give in to homophobes and bigots when giving out artistic grants. I look forward to how Hall will use his time as Poet Laureate. And I hope he comes to Atlanta soon...hint, hint Poetry at Tech!

And of course, this well educated man (Harvard and Oxford) made the academics cry foul after his AWP lecture, Poetry and Ambition, where he called for abolishing MFA programs and accused writing workshops and universities of churning out poets who write "McPoems" and seek nothing but acclaim, a publishing contract with Knopf and a Pulitzer, while the art takes a backseat.

His collection Without reads like a novel and is devastating in its honesty about the loss of Kenyon to leukemia in 1995. Hall said in an interview that he wanted the poems to be frank and direct. "As I get older, I think I become more and more naked," he said. Ah...yes. That's why I like this man...and what I aspire to as I continue writing.