April 5, 2007: White Apples, Donald Hall
White Apples
Donald Hall
when my father had been dead a week
I woke
with his voice in my ear
I sat up in bed
and held my breath
and stared at the pale closed door
white apples and the taste of stone
if he called again
I would put on my coat and galoshes
[I saw Donald Hall at a reading last year, a few weeks before he was named poet laureate and he was funny and charming. He said he thinks this poem works because of the “st” sound at the end of taste and beginning of stone: “That’s what lifts a poem, makes it get off the ground a little.”
I like how it’s kind of a stuttering sound, which seems to match the theme — the interruptions of death, and being suddenly woken. And “white apples and the taste of stone” — how it calls to mind graveyards without quite explaining itself.]
More like this:
To a Waterfowl, Donald Hall
My Mother Said, Donald Hall
Names of Horses, Donald Hall
A year ago: Late Confession, Gary Soto
Two years ago: Steps, Frank O’Hara
