by Daniel Hall
ISBN: 0300047320

I was in the library looking for something else when I found this book. Having just read a long New Yorker article about poetry readings by the author, I decided to read it.

I’m not sorry I did, though as it turns out the article was by Donald Hall, not Daniel. I am bad at names.

There were lines that grabbed me (“or the salt / pang in the solar plexus”), and images (“among the redundant pumpkins / gone goofy, misshapen”) but my favorite part by far was the poem “Short Circuit”:

For no reason,
all at once,

a dove and a jay
swerve and land

at opposite ends
of the clothesline,

and the clothes — mine,
all mine! — commence

to dance with reckless
love and joy.

Turns out there’s another happy accident: we have a different book by this poet, the Daniel Hall, in the house.