Fumbling in the Light
Poems by Sidney Hall Jr.
"Sidney Hall achieves a kind of sophisticated simplicity that is rare among his contemporaries. Call him a neoclassicist seasoned by the spirits of Zen and Taoism—his poems are revelations, beautiful and true.” - Sam Hamill
“Sidney Hall patrols his territory—harsh and beautiful coasts, wild mountain places—with a restless energy, a keen eye and an almost unbearable need to reconcile what he loves of our fragile world with what he fears for it and for us. The poems are shot through with anger and sadness. Yet for all their dark urgency, they are illuminated with slant beams of hope as if to surprise each new visitor / who comes to the end of the world. Take these poems and let them pay out like kites on long strings; then reel them in, one by one.” - Marie Harris, Former New Hampshire Poet Laureate
“These poems reflect a constant striving toward the creation of something gem-like, stanza by stanza, even as the author holds in his hands the earthiest of elements. What delights even more than these word pleasures, however, is the author’s joining of his highly exact style and rich imagery to a quiet but fiercely powerful moral vision and an almost oceanic humanity. This felicitous four-way marriage occurs in poem after poem, whether the subject be dark or light. Sidney Hall’s enlightened constellation of artistic concerns surely distinguishes the best poetry of this or any era.”
- Lawrence Kinsman, author of Water from the Moon and A Well-Ordered Life
About the Author
SIDNEY HALL JR. was born in 1951 and has lived most of his life in southern New Hampshire. His poems have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies. His book reviews have also appeared in the Los Angeles Times Book Review. He is the author of two books of poems, What We Will Give Each Other, and Chebeague, and a book of memoirs, Small Town Tales, a collection of his newspaper columns.
112 pp, Hardcover
ISBN 978-0-9801672-2-1 / Price $21.95
Publication Date: October, 2008
