Poetry readings: "White Apples"

Video URL

You must be registered to use this feature. Sign in or register.

Poetry readings: Mount Kearsarge

RELATED STORIES

Poetry readings: White Apples

Donald Hall Poet

		Views	Duration
91. Coping with life after Jane Kenyon's death		765	07:08
92. Working habits and growing old		657	03:28
93. Poetry readings: White Apples	1	684	00:41
94. Poetry readings: Mount Kearsarge		588	01:14
95. Introduction to The Man in the Dead Machine		638	01:24
96. Poetry readings: The Man in the Dead Machine		545	00:55
97. Poetry readings: My Son, My Executioner		1353	01:08
98. Introduction to Christmas Eve in Whitneyville		510	00:19
99. Poetry readings: Christmas Eve in Whitneyville		606	03:23
100. Introduction to The Day I Was Older		432	01:17

Comments (0) Please sign in or register to add comments

White Apples. My father died when he was 52, I was 27, and a couple of weeks after he died I had a dream and it stayed with me. I think I lay awake. This is the poem:

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

The 14th US Poet Laureate Donald Hall (1928-2018) was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy, then earned a bachelor's degree from Harvard in 1951 and a BLitt, from Oxford in 1953. He published many essays and anthologies of both poetry and prose including String too Short to be Saved: Recollections of Summers on a New England Farm, White Apples and the Taste of Stone, Without: Poems, and Ox-Cart Man, a children's book which won the Caldecott Medal. Hall was editor of the magazine Oxford Poetry, literary editor of Isis, editor of New Poems, and poetry editor of The Paris Review. He won many awards, including two Guggenheim Fellowships and a Robert Frost Medal. At the end of his first Oxford year, he also won the university's Newdigate Prize, awarded for his poem Exile.

Title: Poetry readings: "White Apples"

Listeners: Kendel Currier

Kendel Currier started working for Donald Hall in August of 1994 as his correspondence typist. Later she took on his manuscript typing as well, and in October of 1998 moved 100 meters down the road from Donald and became his personal assistant, adding many various new tasks to her work. As well as working for Donald for the last 10 and-a-half years, Donald Hall and Kendel Currier share a set of great (or for Kendel great-great) grandparents, making them distant cousins and part of a similar New Hampshire heritage.

Tags: White Apples

Duration: 42 seconds

Date story recorded: January 2005

Date story went live: 24 January 2008