7 ratings | 8 reviews | avg rating:4.14

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H.Palmer Hall

Goodreads author profile

url

http://www.goodreads.com/palmer

born

October 01, 1942 in Beaumont, Texas, The United States

gender

male

website

http://library.stmarytx.edu/palmer

genre

Poetry, Literature & Fiction, Nonfiction

influences

Almost every poet I have ever read

member since

April 2008

About this author

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H. Palmer Hall was born in Beaumont, Texas, during World War II and spent most of his formative years in that city between the Big Thicket and the Gulf Coast. He was a Vietnamese interpreter/translator in the Army and spent the 1967-1968 war year in what was then South Vietnam. After returning from Vietnam, he worked for the National Security Agency (NSA) before being denied access to the Agency for marching in anti-war marches and signing a petition of 1,000+ active-duty soldiers opposed to the war. That petition appeared in The New York Times just before the great anti-war marches in Washington in the fall of 1969.
Hall is the editor/publisher of Pecan Grove Press, a small press operating out of St. Mary's University. His poem...more

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Books by H.Palmer Hall

Average rating: 4.00 · 1 rating · 2 reviews · 7 distinct works

	Coming To Terms 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 2007	My rating:
	From The Periphery: Poems And Essays 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	My rating:
	To Wake Again by H. Palmer Hall, H.Palmer Hall (Goodreads Author) 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 2005	My rating:

* Note: these are all the books on Goodreads for this author. To add more, click here.

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H. Palmer's Writing

Stumbling towards a definition of poetry (and failing) (Nonfiction)

1 chapters — updated Mar 29, 2010 04:33pm

Description: This brief essay was originally published in the magazine Ascent and was called "What I talk About When I Talk About Poetry"--an obvious borrowing from Raymond Carver's knack for building titles. It became the opening chapter of my new book, Coming to Terms.

H. Palmer is Currently Reading

H. Palmer Hall is currently reading:

Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond

by Tina Chang

bookshelves: currently-reading

My rating:

H. Palmer Hall said: "I have been dipping into a massive new book of poetry called Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia and Beyond. It is a major piece of scholarship with poets representing close to 60 countries and more than 45 la...moreI have been dipping into a massive new book of poetry called Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia and Beyond. It is a major piece of scholarship with poets representing close to 60 countries and more than 45 languages. But it is not a book that you would want to just sit down and read; instead, it is more of a reference book so that if you are curious about whether there is a decent poet from, say, Qatar, you can poke around and find a few. The book does let us know the "good news"--that poetry is alive and being written everywhere, that in some way, it remains vital. But beyond that, I cannot say that the book is much more than an exercise in naming...not that naming is not itself a great good thing, naming was, for those of us who read Genesis, the first great injunction to mankind. But naming is about as far as a book this ambitious can go: a name, a country identification, a sample poem.

If nothing else, it does give you that name. And so, I read a poem by K. Satchidanandan, an Indian poet who translated his own poem, "Stammer," and I think the poem is excellent. One stanza says that "Stammer is the silence that falls / between the word and its meaning, / just as lameness is the / silence that falls between / the word and the deed." I'm curious and read the rest of the poem and get to the final stanza: "God too must have stammered / when He created Man. / That is why all the words of man / carry different meanings. / That is why everything he utters / from his prayers to his commands / stammers, / like poetry." But if I like the poem, and I do, I have to go somewhere else to read more poetry by K. Satchidanandan, for this anthology is more of a directory of world poets than a collection of poems.

It is a massive undertaking by its editors, Tina Chang, Nathalie Handal and Ravi Shankar, but needs to be appreciated for what it is and not for what it is not. Ultimately, it is something of a taxonomy of world poets and not a collection of poems--though it does collect poems. As such, it is a valuable contribution to the world of poetry reference. I cannot, quite honestly, picture even the most avid readers of poetry sitting down with the book and just reading it as they might read, for example, an anthology like In a Fine Frenzy, poems based upon the works of Shakespeare. Language for a New Century is too massive for that,. too intricate and too broad at the same time.

It is, finally, an important book for what it does and, yes, what it does is important. So, buy the book as a reference book for your collection and as a guide that can lead you to works by poets you may not have heard of but who, as you taste this Whitman sampler of contemporary world poetry, are worth tasting in more than a simple nibble.(less)"

Jun 12, 2008 10:02am · see review

H. Palmer Hall gave

to:

Women of the Beat Generation: The Writers, Artists and Muses at the Heart of a Revolution

by Brenda Knight

bookshelves: currently-reading

read in April, 2008

My rating:

H. Palmer Hall said: "Women of the Beat Generation is essential reading for anyone who is intrigued by Beat writing. Most of the material is a combination of biographical and creative work by the women who hung out with, made love to, served as muses for the male writers...more"

Apr 22, 2008 07:29am · see review

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H. Palmer's Recent Updates

H. Palmer Hall gave to: Ordinary Beans by Gwyn McVay (Goodreads Author)	My rating:
Dec 05, 2009 07:53am
H. Palmer Hall gave to: This Natural History by Gwyn McVay (Goodreads Author)	My rating:
Dec 05, 2009 07:53am
H. Palmer Hall joined the Latino and Latin American Literature group.
Oct 06, 2008 09:51am · see group
H. Palmer Hall gave to: The Downhill Lie: A Hacker's Return to a Ruinous Sport by Carl Hiaasen recommended for: no one read in June, 2008	My rating:
I often read fairly frivolous books...just for pleasure...and sometimes those books offer more than simple pleasures. Carl Hiassen, one of the most insanely funny and intensely ecological writers we have, often give me more than simple pleasures in ...more
Jul 11, 2008 02:26pm · see review
H. Palmer Hall is currently reading: Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond by Tina Chang	My rating:
I have been dipping into a massive new book of poetry called Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia and Beyond. It is a major piece of scholarship with poets representing close to 60 countries and more than 45 la...more
Jun 12, 2008 10:02am · see review
H. Palmer Hall wrote Stumbling towards a definition of poetry (and failing): Thinking About Poetry "Thinking About Poetry It is fairly late at night and I am writing again for the first tim" …more
Apr 25, 2008 08:57am · like
H. Palmer Hall added: Rites of Spring by Unknown Author 131	My rating:
This little book was written, almost by accident, one spring when a discussion groups I belong to (crewrt-l@interversity.org) erupted into a frenzy of "flower writing. As editor of Pecan Grove Press, I thought the poems were pretty damned good so go...more
Apr 25, 2008 08:27am · see review
H. Palmer Hall added: Reflections on Writing, Publishing & Other Things by H. Palmer Hall	My rating:
Apr 24, 2008 10:23pm
H. Palmer Hall said "yes" to attending the event: Reading/Signing date: April 28, 2008 05:00PM location: The Twig Book Shop, 5009 Broadway, San Antonio, TX, The United States description: A reading and signing from H. Palmer Hall's latest books: Coming to Terms (2007) and Reflections from Pete's Pond (2007) at San Antonio's premier independent book store.
Apr 24, 2008 07:48pm