What draws us to poetry in our early, inarticulate years? Answers to the question must vary. From the days when, as a child, I passively absorbed poetry from songs and hymns and when, as an adolescent, I tried to cobble together my own verses, nudged onto paper in imitation of poems from books, I recall…
My Entries aren't a journal in the ordinary sense, a record of occurrences: they are entries into ideas. An event that strikes me as significant or something I've read in a book or newspaper may help me to clarify my ideas and induce me to write a page or two. Making these remarks clears my…
Myers: Your work on The One Day lasted more than a decade, I believe. How long exactly? Hall: It was sixteen years from the time I started the poem-not knowing what I was starting-until I finished it. (I'm always tempted to put quotations around the word, when I say "finished," because, when I have a…
One Intimations Falling Maybe children wake to a love affair every morning or so, maybe that's why, if they are given any chance, they seem to like the world so much. Maybe falling for the world is a thing that happens to them all the time. I hope so, I hope it is purely commonplace….
Take all away from me, but leave me ecstasy. -Emily Dickinson Out of all modesty-and sanity-I would like to think of these poems and stories as approaching the ecstatic state, rather than being expressions of ecstasy. In fact, when I called for work for this issue of Ploughshares, I said I was mostly interested in…
A speech delivered on June 12, 1990 in Tokyo at the American Center. First of all, may I present two stories from two different parts of my own country. One month ago, in Iowa, I went with my next-door neighbor, Cheryl Huang, to attend her swearing-in ceremony as a new American citizen. Cheryl is of…
That citizens of color must confront racism daily in America's traditionally white power culture is no news: nor is it news that white citizens, for the most part, being able to, are more likely to ignore and to evade both their own racism and that of so-called minorities which is directed towards them. By inclination,…
The question I am asked, as a teacher and writer, is: Why do you read Native American literature? What is your justification or rationale for studying the thought and cultures of American native peoples? Not merely enjoying or appreciating, but actually studying, immersing yourself in it? Likewise, you might wonder, how much of the Plains…
The Streets Are Flowing Rivers The blacks on McCullough Street, Druid Hill Avenue and Linden Avenue were people of the Depression in Prohibition neighborhoods that Jean Toomer called "the Preacher-Driven Race"-faces that have all faded, all gone now with a quiet dignity, who on many a Sunday morning sang "My Lord What a Morning" and…
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