Under Sleep (Phoenix Poets),New

Review 'These poems limn the edges of [Hall's] grief, exploring the space created by the palpable absence that defines grief. Hall shows us the loss, not the lost, and his ability to write from inside that distinction is a major achievement.' Jason Schneiderman Lambda Book Report Published On: 20080101 Product Description ThenYou looked up vaguelyor you didnteven the memoryis dying. Then you whole bodybreathed out, and the argument ended.Heaven surfaced about youlike a glass tabletop, hardand cold. Whatever you dodont turn me into poetry. Sorry:I am done crying about itbut I am not done crying.An extended meditation on how death affects those left behind, Under Sleep is a skillfully understated, beautifully rendered elegy for the poets partner. Formally inventive and technically sophisticated, Daniel Hall attends to the power of death to haunt every perception. The poets voice registers as though he were walking on the bottom of the ocean, in a state of mind somewhere under sleep, in a kind of waking dream. In Halls hands, isolated moments of perception bloom into truly touching love elegies.The poems in Under Sleep were written over a period of ten years and, as a result, are densely interconnected, with lines and entire stanzas transplanted between different poems. Using styles ranging from free verse to sonnets, Sapphics, and rhymed haikus, Hall populates the book with literary and historical figuresBaudelaire, Pound, and Casanovain poems set in China, the Middle East, Death Valley, and Italy. Throughout, the poetry is propelled by tension as the speaker struggles with his own better judgmentand against his lovers wishesto turn the loss of the beloved into art.Praise for Daniel HallDaniel Halls work reminds us that a poets sharpsightedness, the whole business of getting things right, is a matter of far more than accuracy. Its a matter ofinescapablythanksgiving.Brad Leithauser, New York Review of Books About the Author Daniel Hall is writerinresidence at Amherst College and the author of two books of poetry, Hermit with Landscape and Strange Relation.