Rhythm & Sound
Reflections on Poetry
by Donald Hall
“Often the beginning of a poem is a few words, I don’t know what they apply to or where they are going, but the characteristic rhythm and sound is in there to start, and it seems to lead the way.” Donald Hall shared his thoughts with us during an interview at his home. Detailing the nature and challenges of writing free verse, the works of poets such as John Keats, Charles Simic, and his late wife, Jane Kenyon, Hall also spoke at length of his affection for the sensuous nature of poetry and the power of assonance and consonance, and he gifted us with a sonorous reading of Thomas Hardy’s “During Wind and Rain.”
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