David K. Leff, Essayist, Poet, Lecturer

In the Country of Poetry with Donald Hall

Without passport or visible border crossing, I found myself not long ago in the country of poetry.  I was at a birthday celebration saluting one of America’s greatest living poets.  Fortunately, plenty of poetry was read in addition to the speeches of praise, honors awarded, and accolades showered on a man who knows that the poem is bigger than the poet, having written that: "Where the poet stops, the poem/ begins. The poem asks only/ that the poet get out of the way."

 
His face as ruggedly carved with years and experience as the rocky Yankee landscape he’s spent his life writing about, former Poet Laureate of the United States Donald Hall returned to his native Hamden, Connecticut to share his 83rd birthday with a community he hasn’t lived in for decades, but which seems to have never left him.  The place lives forever in works like “The Sleeping Giant,” a poem about the signature trap rock ridge looming high above the town’s streets and homes, and “Traffic,” which describes busy Whitney Avenue where his family’s Brock-Hall Dairy once stood.

What You Eat is the Landscape You See: Farms and Farmers Markets

There’s something you can’t buy at the giant chain groceries that’s abundantly free at farmers’ markets.  Call it a festival atmosphere.  There’s a vibe that induces conversation, laughter, and plain old fashioned neighborliness.  Of course, there’s fresh produce, but live music, handicrafts, displays by local nonprofits, and cooking demonstrations add up to fun.  And ultimately there’s something invigorating about buying a head of lettuce and a cucumber from the person whose soil-caked hands indicate they plucked them from the ground that morning.  Farmers cultivate crops.  Farmers’ markets cultivate community.

Extra Innings On Staten Island (a 9/11 poem)

At ninety miles per hour, Schafer’s fastball slams
with a pop into the deep leathery mouth of the
catcher’s mitt.  The scent of grilling sausages hangs
in summer’s searing heat.  Brooklyn’s Bouchard
grounds to shortstop and cheers rise like smoke into
the cloudless sky from this cozy concrete horseshoe
of a stadium.

Over the outfield wall massive tankers and
container ships carrying bright steel canisters pass
as silently as icebergs along the Kill Van Kull.  The
harbor beyond is herringboned with whitecaps and
busy with tugs pushing barges and fishing trawlers
with their nets reeled on deck.  The boxy ferry
crosses and recrosses past the grand green lady as she
stands sentry before the City’s shimmering cliffs, its
mesas and buttes of masonry, its columns of glass
and steel that are filing cabinets of humanity.  But
the twin towers of dark glass still haunt like the pain
of an amputee’s phantom limb.

Anxiety spread like flu on that day when the sky was
an azure arc in which a centerfielder could lose a fly.
We gathered around televisions repeatedly watching
the cartoonish unreality of the plane, the explosion
of flames and slowly coiling gray smoke.  Fear-
contorted faces filled streets darkened by the black
rain of debris.  Bridges filled with pedestrians.
Tearful men and women held pictures of the
missing.

Jostled by catcalls and shouts, I’m back with Lovett
at the bat.  On a hit-and-run he puts the ball in play,
allowing Grote to slide safely at third.  Tie score
and I wonder if Brewer can bunt, can execute the
suicide squeeze.  He’s an unknown on a roster filled
with untested names like Cuello, Nutt, Granke,
and Gonell.  Any could be the next Ruth whose
legendary bat will lift a nation.  But Brewer’s caught
looking at a pitch on the inside corner, and I get up
to grab a sausage against the uncertainty of extra
innings.

Rags, Art, and Memory

Everyone has a rag collection.  Tucked away in a cabinet, on a shelf, or filling a closet bag, rags are close at hand though out of sight.  Generally soft, absorbent fragments of cloth, we use them to wipe dirty  surfaces, clean up spills, and to take care of the most indelible messes.  Though unwanted scraps of castoffs, they hold an everyday magic we rarely contemplate.

The Falls (poem)

Like a caged animal relegated to a spectacle, the
falls churn as tourists gawk, knowing the rumble
and spray are for their amusement.  Painters
daub at easels beside the granite block dam
and photographers focus on the roiling white foam.
Fishers cast their luck into bouldery, turbulent riffles.

Once the muscular water spun wheels and turbines,
turned gears and drive shafts that drove slapping
leather belts, powering machines and jobs energizing
a village with cash.  It whirled dynamos, sending
streams of electrons along wires that lit a brick
factory, homes, the bank, grocery and barber shop.
The river ground grain, sawed lumber, forged steel,
stamped machetes, and sharpened axes.

In deeper time, natives came with spears to where the
swift water slowed the salmon, blueback herring and
shad.  They feasted, celebrated, and fed families in
this place of abundance.

The river’s business is now entertainment, drawing
trade to the village like a free lunch.  Sightseers stop
for fuel and a quick bite, film, bait, a newspaper or
bottle of beer.  But as sure as the river runs, it holds
us in thrall, mesmerizing with falling water reflecting
every face as it slides over the precipice.