If our goal is to write poetry, the only way we are likely to be any good is to try to be as great as the best. Donald Hall More Quotes by Donald Hall More Quotes From Donald Hall Horace, when he wrote the Ars Poetica, recommended that poets keep their poems home for ten years; don't let them go, don't publish them until you have kept them around for ten years: by that time, they ought to stop moving on you; by that time, you ought to have them right. Donald Hall homeyearsmoving Today when I begin writing I’m aware: something that I don’t understand drives this engine. Donald Hall engineswritingtoday For most baseball fans, maybe oldest is always best. We love baseball because it seizes and retains the past, like the snowy village inside a glass paperweight. Donald Hall glassesbaseballpast I see no reason to spend your life writing poems unless your goal is to write great poems. Donald Hall goalreasonwriting Poetry is what I've done my whole life. And every important thing in my life had found itself into poems. Donald Hall importantdonefound The pleasure we feel, reading a poem, is our assurance of its integrity. Donald Hall pleasurereadingintegrity I want to sleep like the birds then wake to write you again without hope that you read me. Donald Hall sleepwritingbird Opposites are attracted when each one is anxious about its own character. Donald Hall anxiousoppositescharacter The greatest kindness would put a bullet in his bright eye. Donald Hall craftseyekindness Sweet death, small son, our instrument Donald Hall decaysweetson I wish you were that birch rising from the clump behind you, and I the gray oak alongside. Donald Hall griefwishloss Of course newspaper sportswriting is mostly terrible - and of course it is usually the best writing in the paper. Donald Hall terriblepaperwriting But Blake's voices returned to dictate revisions. Donald Hall blakerevisionvoice The form of free verse is as binding and as liberating as the form of a rondeau. Donald Hall versesbindingform Joe DiMaggio batting sometimes gave the impression, the suggestion that the old rules and dimensions of baseball no longer applied to him, and that the game had at last grown unfairly easy. Donald Hall suggestionsbaseballgames In football they measure forty-yard sprints. Nobody runs forty yards in basketball. Maybe you run the ninety-four feet of the court; then you stop, not on a dime, but on Miss Liberty's torch. In football you run over somebody's face. Donald Hall basketballrunningfootball Generation on generation, your neck rubbed the windowsill Donald Hall horseglassessea For a hundred and fifty years, in the pasture of dead horses, Donald Hall autumnhorsewinter To grow old is to lose everything. Donald Hall losesgrows Every now and then I meet someone certain of personal greatness. I want to pat this person on the shoulder and mutter comforting words: "Things will get better! You won't always feel so depressed! Cheer up!" Donald Hall things-will-get-bettergreatnesscheer
