Portrait of Your Niece

And Other Poems

Carol Hall

• Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press
• Year: 1959
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9780816662760
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

Portrait of Your Niece was first published in 1959.Carol Hall wrote her first poem, addressed to Santa Claus, when she was four years old. She has been writing ever since and has contributed poems to many magazines, but this is the first collection of her poetry to be published in book form. The volume contains fifty lyric and dramatic poems.Richard Eberhart comments: “Carol Hall’s poems are mature, tightly written and full of thought. She is not afraid to take a hard look at the truth. She can be light-hearted too. There is a sophisticated mind always present in the varying views and evaluations in this book.”Another interesting comment on this collection comes from Arnold Stein: “What especially attracts me is the voice I hear in the poems -- distinctive, wonderfully modulated, and remaining somehow itself even while expressing the intensities and surprises of the imagination with skill and force and courage.”Among the poems in this volume are some that have appeared previously in Botteghe Oscure (Italy), the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Sewanee Review, New World Writing, Poetry, Western Review, Quarterly Review of Literature, Folder, Perspective, Voices, Experiment, Interim, and Poetry Northwest.

Table of contents

• CONTENTS
• WHEN I WAS A CHILD I BOUGHT THE BEACH
• COUNTRY WITHOUT RAIN
• PORTRAIT OF YOUR NIECE
• BEACH AT PASTURE
• THE FUNERAL-BAKED MEATS
• TWO CHORUSES FROM THE WOODCUTTER'S CHILDREN
• SONS AND FATHERS: THE HOMECOMING
• EVENTS AT ORAN
• BACK INSIDE THE LEANING TOWER
• WILL YOU GO WITH US TO THE SEA?
• DREAMS OF FAIR WOMEN
• ON THE CHILDISH MORNING STREETS
• PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST'S WIFE
• THAT SHALLOW, SOFT, AMORPHOUS I
• THE SHIP
• NOW KNOCK YOUR FORELOCK ON YOUR KNEE
• A GIFT OF WINTER APPLES
• COUNTRY BREAKS OVER CITY
• AS ANGELS FELL AND COULD NOT RISE
• FOUR PURCHASES
• THE OLD BRAVE MAN WITH THE LEG OF STONE
• KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK ON THAT OLD BROWN DOG
• THE STATIONS OF THE BREATH
• THE COTTER'S CHILDREN
• YOU WITH THE WORN COIN
• YOUR SISTER'S DROWNED, LAERTES
• DEATH, DIVE ON THE HISTORY-RIDDEN TREE
• A ROOM IN THE CASTLE
• A FURTHER ELEGY OF INNOCENCE
• A SAVIOR RAVED
• THIS IS A COUNTRY SUCH AS NEVER WAS
• OFFICE MEMORANDA
• EPITAPH FOR OUR LANDLORD
• WHEN SHE FELT THE DARK-FURRED SEAL
• TO FALL IS TO GO OUT BY THE ROTTEN DOOR
• TO A WOMAN SEEN EATING THE EVENING PAPER
• POEM IN PRAISE OF SAINTS
• AN OLD WOMAN'S WORDS TO HER YOUNG CAT
• PRODIGIES OF CIRCUMSTANCE
• OLD MAP OF SUMMER
• THE FOURTH AGE OF ICE
• ANCIENT HISTORY
• WARNING OF BIRDS
• MARY FREDERICK McCALL: HER BIOGRAPHY
• ODE TO A SOLITARY GOLDFISH
• WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY
• GAMES IN THE PARK
• TWO BARCLAYS
• COMPANY THAT NIGHT
• BEFORE MY KEPT HANDS CURVED TO FORM THIS CROSS