Abstract

Donald Hall is zealously and enthusiastically committed to poetry. It is his calling, his profession, his joy. He preaches poetry, he proselytizes, and he makes converts. Donald Hall's poems and his public readings are celebrations of poetry's essence: he persuades the audience to believe in its power and its efficacy. Hall frees poetry's spirit and its vitality from the pretensions of academe, so that it is no longer an inert display sequestered in the exhibition halls of academic classrooms, to be illuminated at the whim of scholar-curators. This is not to imply that Hall panders to the demotic. His poems are admired and highly valued by the best writers and critics of the generation. Rather, as The Museum of Clear Ideas demonstrates, Hall's poetry is inclusive and accessible: it rewards academics and non-academics alike, the average reader as well as the trained reader