Donald Hall has been named the next Poet Laureate of the United States, and will follow Ted Kooser, taking over the post in the fall of 2006. The Museum of Clear Ideas was the first introduction I had to Hall’s poetry, and what a perfect introduction.
Many people think that because a person is a poet, that fact somehow prevents them from appreciating sports. Heck, I even know some poets who don’t think poets should follow sports – as if art and sport are incompatible.
Hall’s collection puts aside the above foolish notion. He is a big fan of baseball. The 2nd and 4th sections of this collection are titled “Baseball” – consisting of nine long poems entitled First Inning, Second Inning, and so on – and “Extra Innings” – consisting of Tenth, Eleventh and Twelfth long poems.
What Hall does in these sections is not so much writing about baseball itself (though there is that), but to weave into details of his life snippets that also demonstrate his love of baseball. How it has informed his life. For example, the opening two stanzas of The Seventh Inning:
1. Baseball, I warrant, is not the whole
occupation of the aging boy.
Far from it: There are cats and roses;
there is her water body. She fills
the skin of her legs up, like water;
under her blouse, water assembles,
swelling lukewarm; her mouth is water,
her cheekbones cool water; water flows
in her rapid hair. I drink water
2. from her body as she walks past me
to open a screen door, as she bends
to weed among herbs, or as she lies
beside me at five in the morning
in submarine light. Curt Davis threw
a submarine ball, terrifying
to right-handed batters…
The first section of the collection is a single long poem called "Another Elegy," written In Memory of William Trout, a troubled poet who passed away in 1977 after initial successes, including a first book – Memory’s Jargon – published in the Yale Younger Poets Series.
The third section of the book is titled "The Museum of Clear Ideas or say: Horsecollar’s Odes." These poems are written in an unforgettable voice/persona, referencing a character named Horsecollar who seems to be sort of an “everyman.”
If you are looking for a collection to introduce you to this U.S. Poet Laureate, look no further than The Museum of Clear Ideas.
115 pages.
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