Love Poem

When you fall in love,

you jockey your horse

into the flaming barn.

You hire a cabin

on the shiny  Titanic .

You tease the black bear.

Reading the  Monitor ,

you scan the obituaries

looking for your name.

MARGINALIA

In the middle of deadlines and aching feet, new books and milk tea named  African Sunrise .

KEEP READING

SHARED WITH GRATITUDE

This poem appeared in    White Apples and the Taste of Stone: Selected Poems 1946-2006  by Donald Hall  , published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2006. (Available on:  Amazon  •  Bookshop )

DESCRIPTION

“White Apples and the Taste of Stone is the definitive lifetime work of an American master — with a bound-in audio CD of selections read by the author.

One of the most significant poets of his generation, Donald Hall has garnered numerous accolades and honors, including the Frost Medal from the Poetry Society of America, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. White Apples and the Taste of Stone collects more than two hundred poems from across sixty years of Hall’s celebrated career, with new poems recently published in The New Yorker, the American Poetry Review, and the New York Times. Greatly anticipated, this is Hall’s first selected volume in fifteen years, and also the first to include poems from his seminal bestseller, Without.

The bound-in audio CD was specially recorded by Hall for this publication — more than an hour of favorite poems from throughout the book. Hall’s distinctive, sonorous voice and inimitable humor provide a perfect companion for fans of his work and for classroom use.” ( Source )

ABOUT DONALD HALL

Donald Hall was born on September 20, 1928, and grew up in Hamden, Connecticut. Hall earned a BA from Harvard University and a bachelor of letters degree from the University of Oxford. In 1955, Hall published his first poetry collection,   Exiles and Marriages   (Viking Press), which was the Academy of American Poet’s Lamont Poetry Selection 1956. His other books are   The Selected Poems of Donald Hall   (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015);   The Painted Bed   (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2002); …  (more)

Donald Hall was born on September 20, 1928, and grew up in Hamden, Connecticut. Hall earned a BA from Harvard University and a bachelor of letters degree from the University of Oxford. In 1955, Hall published his first poetry collection,   Exiles and Marriages   (Viking Press), which was the Academy of American Poet’s Lamont Poetry Selection 1956. His other books are   The Selected Poems of Donald Hall   (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015);   The Painted Bed   (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2002); and   Without: Poems   (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1998). He died on June 23, 2018, New Hampshire. ( Source )

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ENDNOTES

Explore other works in pursuit of:  irony  •  risk  •  love  •  Or browse the index

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ON THIS DAY

On This Day

Love Poem by Donald Hall

2011