Name of Horses - A poem by Donald Hall - American Poems
There's one more installment to go, probably tomorrow, on poetry conferences and M.F.A. programs. But in the visitor comments last time, K gave us a fine poem by the late Jane Kenyon. In response, I offer this one, by her surviving husband, Donald Hall. For me, it has something important in common with Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays."
It's possible that Hall doesn't need every detail prior to the final line; but rhythm, music, along with timing and preparation are subtle matters. If you listen for places where his vowel sounds and meter really enhance the showing and the telling, I think you'll find some. I'm willing to pay tribute to these horses for the fairly short time Donald Hall asks of me. In the poem as a whole, I find an unusual dignity, decorum, elegance, and much of that has to do with the solemn pacing of Hall's tribute.
Besides, the last line has always given me shivers. The list of names strikes me as a daring move by Hall, but I still think it works perfectly as an elegiac conclusion. In the end, how much more praise can we offer than naming the departed? At some point, reciting a list of honors becomes a tedious show. Whatever else the guy was, he was James. Pointing out that he was summa cum laude might almost be an insult. He was not some Latin phrase; he was not Vice Present of Trinket Manipulation; he was James.
Name of Horses - A poem by Donald Hall - American Poems
I came across "Names of Horses" around 1980, which, I think, predates Donald Hall's meeting and courting of Jane Kenyon, never mind her illness and death; so those with a penchant for the biographical should not try to read the poem as a tribute to her. (For that, by the way, Hall has an entire book: The Best Day The Worst Day.)
I cannot explain away the misuse of "lay" just before the final line. It should be "laid"; there is a direct object. I cannot attribute the mistake to poetic license. License to do what? In three decades, shouldn't someone have caught it and changed it?
Tidbit: Bob Dylan's "Lay, lady, lay" is equally at fault grammatically. For reasons I'm unable to articulate, I can give Dylan the benefit of the doubt, but if we had never heard the line as we now know it, how un-musical or un-horny would it have sounded had Dylan given us "Lie, lady, lie/Lie across my big brass bed"?
Oh, I get it! Bad grammar is sexy. Without "lay" as a copulatory connotation and a demonstration that this guy is a man's man right out of the hills near Elkhorn City, Kentucky . . . without the cue of "lay," the girl might have thought he wanted her to take a nap. She might have wondered where the milk and cookies were. But no. This guy is no dreary philologist or that there girl would not be a layin' 'cross no brass bed, big, little or medium.
Gracious, one can miss so much in the pursuit of appropriate language.
Tidbit: in case someone is interested, we looked at another, very different Donald Hall poem here on November 10, 2010.
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