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Unpacking The Boxes: A Memoir Of A Life In Poetry (2008)

by Donald Hall(Favorite Author)

3.74 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0618990658 (ISBN13: 9780618990658)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

review 1: ¬Donald Hall, U.S. Poet laureate in 2006 and husband of poet Jane Kenyon is a favorite poet of mine, which is why I picked up this book – a memoir of sorts about his lifelong passion for poetry (which began, amazingly enough when he was a child and decided he wanted to be a poet when he grew up.) Unfortunately this book left me feeling oddly disappointed – as if I’d been indulging an elderly man by listening to him recount past sorrows and glories. At times I felt a bit embarrassed for him because knowing his reputation as a writer of eloquent prose and beautifully crafted poetry I expected a lot more from this book. Instead it felt like he was trying to impress the reader by mentioning all the remarkable and luminary writers he had known throughout his life, as ... morewell as his success in achieving what he dreamed of doing as a boy – which was not simply to write poetry but to be a great poet. Hall writes from the perspective of a man who is in his eighties. In places he does a great job of vividly and poignantly describing what it is like to live on what he calls the planet of antiquity. Unfortunately, by the time the book ambles along to its end it feels like Hall has lost his focus and has begun to ramble on and on about himself in much the same way many elderly people do when their worlds begin to shrink and the only thing they can find to talk about has to do either with their many infirmities and health problems or their past accomplishments from earlier stages of life. As much as I admire Donald Hall I will continue to love his poetry, but this is not a book I can recommend.
review 2: Such strange pacing, which makes more sense when I realized that The Best Day the Worst Day was taken as a chunk from the center of this memoir and became another separate book, which I will eventually read. I like Donald Hall's poetry; yet in regards to him, I am mostly drawn to the love relationships between poets, and Hall & Kenyon's is so well-documented!& there is this: "One morning as I revised, I set down a word that I knew was not right, and I heard myself think: But I can SAY it so that it's right. Immediately, I knew that I had understood one of the hazards of reading aloud. Performance can paper over bad writing, or substitute for the best language." less

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