Affirmation (Donald Hall)

I like the straightforwardness of this poem on aging by Donald Hall. It is calm, almost didactic and I supposed frightening in its implications ("To grow old is to lose everything."), but its pace is steady, its conclusions so obvious and unavoidable that I find the poem to be comforting overall.

After all, the poem's conclusion (as its title indicates) is an affirmation that all go through aging and that that is something worthy savoring ("delicious"). So, a toast 'to life!' might as well be the same as 'to getting old!'. Enjoy them equally.

Favorite line: "New women come and go. All go."

New women come and go. All go.

My Son, My Executioner (Donald Hall)

I didn't know before I saw his profile that Donald Hall is a modern writer. While the themes in this poem are modern-sounding, they seem so timeless and universal that it could have been written in any age.

I have never had a child, so I can't appreciate this poem directly, but I can still infer the truth that it expresses. To have a child is to start your line in perpetuity. True. But it also must conjure thoughts of mortality. A child, so defenseless, probably kick-started Donald Hall's thoughts that led to this poem--this realization that 1.) the parents' lives are biologically non-important once they have created life and 2.) that they are now more like their own parents than they were a few hours before and must therefore be that much closer to their own old age.

I think it's kind of wonderful that this poem about a just-born baby can have this dark quality to it. And while I get why the son is called an executioner (it automatically puts the reader in the proper frame of mind), I don't really see the son as being active in ending his father's life. I don't have a better term in mind, but it's my one eh? moment.

Favorite line: "We/...observe enduring life in you/and start to die together."

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