Strange Relation [INSCRIBED]

Hall's first book, Hermit with Landscape, was chosen for the Yale Series of Younger Poets; and this, his second book, is a winner of the 1995 National Poetry Series (selected by Mark Doty). But in Hall's poetic world, things never proceed quite so gratifyingly; family interactions, in particular, are strained and complex. Or, as he puts it in the title poem, "You know how the first micro-/ second of sugar's message might be salt?" The collection is sprinkled with small pleasures. An ode to "Coca-Cola" smacks of Wallace Stevens's "Anecdote of the Jar." A sad villanelle, "Interior," blends an Asian stoicism with television: "A leaf falls from the bonsai tree:/ ancient instructions trickle through./ There's a man in tears on TV." Stevens and Asia, where the poet spent a year as an Amy Lowell Traveling Scholar, are constant presences in this work. TV sets, too, are ubiquitous, playing the role of deus ex machina in several of the poems, as in "The View from Here," in which the tube in Mrs. Hu's apartment across the hall sends the roar of a soccer crowd into the poet's lonely room.

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It should come as no surprise that this poet's first book was selected by James Merrill for the Yale Younger Poets Series and this collection by Mark Doty for the National Poetry Series: Hall's elegant use of familiar words is reminiscent of Doty's, and he seems like a true heir to Merrill's sinuous poise. Hall's subjects-memories of early family life, art, poetry, travel-are perhaps not remarkable, but his understanding of them is very much so. In one poem, fireworks become the firing of neurons; in another, a Coca-Cola can becomes an image for ecstatic experience. Hall is a student of earlier poets-several poems gracefully recall the likes of Issa, Rilke, and Wallace Stevens-but he is never a mere imitator. Hall is also capable of notable verbal music-a cat's "flicky shiver," the "voluptuous dark" of a fur coat-but what is best in him does not extract easily; his poems are carefully paced acts of celebration and rescue. He is certain to grow into one of the major voices of American poetry; one could say of his talent, as he says of light: "no matter/ how far it's come, how many years it took,/ it's here, look, and it never stops coming." Highly recommended.
Graham Christian, Andover-Harvard Theological Lib., Cambridge, Mass.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.