Donald Hall, the Poet, and his Book, Life Work

Other People and the Noise

How do you write poems in a house with other people, especially a child, and dogs that need to be fed, and a cat whose box needs to be cleaned out, who sits outside the upstairs bedroom and howls at you?

Donald Hall said that Gertrude Stein wrote in her Ford, parked at a busy Paris street corner. By law, drivers had to sound their horns when approaching an intersection. So, imagine the cacophony of that scene. She said the noise took the top of her mind off so she could pay attention at the right level. The next time I feel the top of my head coming off, I will look for my notebook and pen.

I can do it if I close the door, I can tune it all out, and I can write. If there is not music with good flatpicking guitar, because that makes me want to pick up my own guitar; or music with lyrics that compete with my attention and my present level of emotion, because that makes me want to make rhyming tunes; without these kinds of distractions, I am fine. If no one calls my name or asks anything of me, I can deal with it and let the noise go on behind the closed door.

I can’t really say that the background noise is helpful. I prefer silence, and a view out a window into trees, like now, in approaching winter, with empty limbs, and in the spring and summer, with leaves, with birds and squirrels, and grass and flowers. Just not people. Not words. Not music. Only quiet and the natural world. Kind of like AlderMarsh on Whidbey Island, WA, or a campsite at Brown County State Park.

Donald Hall said that he and Jane Kenyon worked in the same house at the same time, each having a study in opposite sides of the house, and for the entire morning, worked without disturbing each other. Then, they made lunch, and after lunch a short nap and sex, or was it sex and then a nap? Then errands. Then supper, followed by a ballgame and dictating letters. Sounds so nice.

I can work out of the playfulness of right-brain mind here in this back room overlooking the back yard, with the door closed. The puppies will want to come in and sleep in the seat of the recliner while I work. I sit on my big blue exercise ball.

I don’t need a typist for proofs. I compose while sitting at my desk on my big blue exercise ball, words moving across the screen of my MacBook. I edit and read out loud – another reason to crave solitude, no one listening to my phrases and sometimes curses.

Thank you, Donald Hall, for your book, Life Work.