Donald Hall takes his College and University Audience through all phases of the critical analysis process for Fiction, Poetry and Drama. He makes,as do all geniuses, his subject accessable to all levels and needs. His explication of symbolism and imagry is especially useful.

This is a "must read" for every aspiring student and teacher of literature.

If , in our modern world, we ask whether women are still vulnerable, we need only to turn to Meg Kearney's An Unkindness of Ravens for the answer. In "Swan Song" "She knew his boots were full of mud...She felt him watching through the dark...She could smell him now. Beer and cigarettes...She'd known [what he intended to do] by the way he'd come in the door." He had brought the "rush of rain" from the porch into their bedroom..."Making a mess of everything."
While the effect of a drunken man is strongly demonstrated in one poem, Kearney clearly gives us a more encompassing picture of female loss in "Love is a Form of Recklessness" when she relates that "My mother's love is the strength to walk and keep on walking, drive and keep driving until her daughter has learned to live without her..."
In this volume, Meg Kearney even touches on that famous "La Belle Dame" who gave and gave "until at last she'd given it all away."
This is not to say that Kearney only contemplates the causes of female depression. Many of her poems also reflect fond memories of a father lost and chances for a new love found.

A Writer's Reader has always been my first choice as a text for beginning college writing courses because of its rich variety of form and content and the insightful and very readable commentary by Donald Hall. This new edition contains many recent additions by contemporary writers but also retains most of the classic essays that have been favorites of mine and so superbly illustrate the writer's craft and the beauty of form and content. Students like reading these essays, which show them how a writer makes choices about audience, tone, language, and illustration. The book is absent the tedious didacticism of many college writing texts and allows the instructor the pleasure and freedom of teaching by example and discussion.

William Stafford has a way of writing that makes you feel like a welcome guest in his house. Here he talks in prosaic passages about what is important in writing, how to inspire your own writing, together with examples of his own work.

Reading this book is much like reading Stafford's poetry. The tone is relaxed but captivating, and he makes the task of writing well seem effortless. This book, together with "You Must Revise Your Life," is a fantastic read for writers of any level or ability.

I want to review this book even though I have a copy of the 1973 edition of this book only. Hall illuminates writing in a way that makes writing interesting. I've never considered myself a writer. Most of my educational as well as personal pursuits could be classified as "left-brained", and although I can appreciate good poetry and literature, I have maintained a disdain for attempting to produce either. Hall's writing pulled me in by explaining the elements of prose in a clear, understandable, and enjoyable way. For anyone who struggles with writing, or for anyone who has difficulty being motivated to improve their writing, this book is for you. This book puts even the fundamental parts of speech in a totally different light. Nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs look very different after reading this book! As a left-brained person, I used to like the concept of synonyms, never realizing that synonyms don't really exist! Who would have known that a word substituted for another word makes such a huge difference! Whether your writing is technical, poetic, or a mixture of the two, I believe this book can be a great benefit.

If you havn't read this book you are in for a treat!
With the recent release of Ambrose' 'Band of Brothers' on HBO there has been an overdue increase of interest in the Screaming Eagles of WWII. This book is what first interested me. This is the first in a series of four books written by a regular trooper of the 101st...And what a series it is. This set is considered by most to be one of the best memoirs ever written about war. Here is exposed the fear and tradgedy of a real battlefield. Burgett has you on the edge of your seat for the entire ride from the unbearable training in the hot Southern sun to the terrors of D-Day and the battle around Carentan. This is no holds barred, exposed in all its raw detailed writing at its best!
Please be sure to couple this book with the next three, including the number one WWII book (in my opinion), Seven roads to Hell. Together this set allows an unforgettable glimpse into the life of a WWII paratrooper!
If you want the complete experience, read 'Rendezvous with Destiny' (see my review) for the complete unit history of the 101st, and do so before this memoir.

Burgett's memoir was initially published in 1967. It came out when most books on World War II were about generals, or not even about the fighting. Burgett's book was a reminder that war is essentially about young men trying to kill other young men and the hell of it all. I purchased this book when Bantam reissued it under the title "As Eagles Screamed." I still have that copy and have read it several times.
All I can say is that if you're picking up this book for the first time, you're in for a treat. If you've already read it, well then you know how good it is. Burgett's books are a fine companion piece to Ambrose's "Band of Brothers." In some ways, it's even better because we see the whole war through the eyes of one man who survived it's most horrible moments.

I have been a student of World War II since junior high (I am now 41). This book, and the others by Burgett, are the most spell-binding accounts of battle I have ever read. They really put you into the mind of a young paratrooper. Burgett doesn't regale you with his acts of heroics. He does hold others in awe, but describes his own actions in a matter-of-fact manner, downplaying any type of heroics on his part. What really sets this book apart from other war books, though, is Burgett's eye for detail. He tells you about the food they ate, the dead livestock, the countryside in a manner that allows the reader to actually visualize it. Burgett has the same knack for details that Tom Clancy does. The difference is that Burgett's were all too real.

Only this evening I finished reading "Without." I remain stunned by not only the quality of the poetry, but by the utter honesty of Donald Hall in his documentation of his wife's illness and death.

No one other than Galway Kinnell has, for me, expressed with such simple clarity through their poetry the sometimes unbearable anguish of simply being human. Anyone who has ever suffered the loss of another, whether through death or distance, will grieve with Hall and appreciate the pain that this art required.

This book will remain with me for many years, as I know it will be one to which I will be compelled to return. Read it, and appreciate every day you are given.

In his book of poems "Without", Donald Hall weaves a lexicographic tribute to his late wife, and fellow poet, Jane Kenyon, and in turn, leaves the world a legacy of grief and honor.

I first heard of this book by listening to NPR's "This American Life" on a featured story about the couple. Donald himself read some of these poems, and I knew within a minute, I had to have this work.

As poets so meekly and admirably do, Donald Hall captures the moments of his wife's last days through her battle with leukemia. The poems are simple, attainable, and direct. He minces no words as he describes Jane's downfall. He poetry is both pure and chilling; you feel her loss, you feel her impact, you feel.

If you are considering purchasing this book, I may recommend you purchasing Jane Kenyon's final book of poetry called "Otherwise". In a sense, they are companion pieces to each other, and in reading both you hear her voice, along with his, to make it theirs.

I highly recommend this book if you have ever lost someone, or want to understand the not understandable impact of losing someone.

Without constitutes my first experience with Donald Hall's poetry, need I say it was not my last? This collection reads like a novel, it is really a fluid sequence of accounts of his wife's death, either in devastatingly ironic and witty snapshots or extended odes and elegies such as the harrowing "Letter With No Address," written to his dead wife, nearly all of which will grab you by the throat and suck you into the spaces in between the words. Hall knew that if he was going to try and rip a vein of life from his soul and convey its contents to his readers, he could only do so by immersing them within the poems themselves. Few poets ever develop the kind of authenticity of voice required to achieve such a feat. It is surely a standard to which any poet aspires.

Donald Hall approached this project perfectly. This is not a collection that stammers with captivating imagery or the kind of unfathomable metaphorical connections that are found in the work of our best American poets such as Hart Crane or Walt Whitman. Hall knew that in devoting a collection of poems to such a personal and painful experience, one that obviously left its fang marks on his heart, he risked committing some of the cardinal sins of poetry, such as mawkishness and self-pity.

Hall avoids those pitfalls at every conceivable instance. His ability to blend sentimentality with dry irony and compelling wit, compounded by his successful effort to keep himself out of the poems despite his inevitable relation to them, make this the finest collection of his career, and indeed the work of a man who just may be ranked among our very top American poets somewhere down the line. Without stands among the most riveting documents of love, desire and loss to be found throughout the history of American Poetry.

As one of the poets featured in Will Work for Peace, one might expect me to be a bit biased, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Most poets work in a virtual vacuum, only tenuously connected to each other by the occasional workshop or shared membership in a 'poetry society'. When Brett Axel first approached me for a submission to an anthology he was considering, the names Marge Piercy, Lyn Lifshin, Moshe Bennaroch and so many others were abstractions to me as a fledgling poet. I knew these tremendous writers were 'out there' somewhere, beating down doors with their words and keeping a struggling artform alive. But to think that someday I would ever share a credit with these dynamic modern poets would be a pipe dream at best. It is through the sincere efforts of Brett Axel that many newer voices like mine have an extraordinary opportunity to appear with Pulitzer Prize winners and other poetic heavyweights. By way of an honest review, however, I will say this- not everything in this book will be to your particular liking. I myself came across some works that did not move me in the way the author may have intended. Some imagery can be raw and visceral, using shock value in place of craft at times. But to ignore those voices would be an even more shocking turn of events, so praise be to the editor for not sacrificing his vision to a senseless conformity. As Pete Seeger so aptly put it in his quote, trying to read all these poems at one time would be like trying 'to swallow Manhattan whole'. I say to you- buy this book, read this book, but understand that it's what you do after reading this book that will ultimately define who you could be. Poetry is alive and well, and lives in the blunt pages of Will Work for Peace.

Brett Axel visited my Church and I bought a copy of Will Work For Peace from him, not for poetry, but because I care about working for peace. I started reading through it thinking It'd just go on my shelf and that'd be the end of it, but the book grabbed me and kept me rivited. If I had known that poetry was this alive I'd have been into poetry. I've been reading some of the poems to my friends who also didn't think poetry was important and they are saying the same thing. Fantastic! There's no way to get through this book without having your old mindsets challenged. It's funny, powerful, sad, and uplifting. A book that deserves to be read by everyone. A book that really can make the world a better place!

Just amazing start to finish! I like the disregard for fame used in putting the book together. That great poems got in even if they were writtenby nobodys. Look at Roger Bonair-Agard's poem on page 74. Shortly after Will Work For Peace came out he won Slam Nationals, becoming Slam Champion of 1999, which will be getting him lots of offers. But Zeropanik Press didn't need to be told he was good by an award. They could tell by his writing! Good for them and good for all of us because Will Work For Peace is a literary milestone. It's a new standard for all future anthology editors to try to live up to. Thumbs up to Brett Axel and Thumbs up to Zeropanik Press for their guts and integrty.

Sometimes at the end of a short story, I go 'huh?' and turn the page, thinking surely there must be more. Not so with Willow Temple. Most of these stories, examining the myriad repercussions of brief moments in time, leave readers with a satisfying sense of completion. Many of them focus on a sense of longing for the simple times of the past years, and the prose, while spare and focused, is at the same time lyrical and evocative.
A good find. Fans of literary fiction should love it. Those who aren't, won't!

Donald Hall is a fine, intelligent craftsman of a writer. He knows how to distill volumes into a few pages, how to inform his reader about the spectrum of life from which he plucks his characters with a minimalism that in other hands would create a cold if not frigid climate. Hall is to short stories what Charles Ives and John Adams and Aaron Copeland are to music, Richard Russo and E.L. Doctorow and E. Annie Proulx are to novels: he has found the six senses in American life and weaves them into tapestries like few others. There is a bit of Robert Frost, of Walt Whitman, of Wallace Stevens and of William Carlos Wiliams here, and their presence is honored and hallowed.

Donald Hall is concerned with the cycle of life, not only the reverent form, but also the rocks and boulders that our lives encounter. He is able to speak in the voices of children and adults as narrators, wades through the toxicity of alcoholic parents, the foibles of those that have and those that have not, deals with the cold reality of dying and its aftermath on the living, and yet is able through his incredible gifts with words to make elegies and songs, instead of eulogies and bleatings. These stories are brief in pages, nearly all of them have the terse no-nonsense New England psycheand stoicism, and yet each story brings a desire to sit and cogitate, assuring ourselves we will not forget the folks we've just met. Read and weep, read and chuckle, but by all means .... read.

I have read almost all the Jessica Fletcher-Donald Bain "Murder She Wrote" mysteries. Of all of them thus far, I have found this one the most boring. I was looking forward to a Christmas mystery set in Cabot Cove, but found this one not up to the usual standards. The characters (apart from the continuing ones-- Jessica, Mort, Seth) are not interesting or original. It's a "darker" mystery than some of the others.

For the past twelve years, the residents of Cabot Cove, Maine celebrate Christmas with a festival that started with a few carolers. Over the years, the gala event has evolved into a week long happening filled with tourists and guests, who want to partake in "America's most traditional Christmas celebration". Resident Jessica Fletcher is especially looking forward to her hometown's holiday celebration after spending the last few seasons away from home.

However, Jessica's idyll time is abruptly over when her neighbor Rory Brent, who always plays Santa Claus, is found murdered. With one noted exception, the immediate suspect in everyone's mind is Maine's year round Scrooge, Jake Walther, a lunatic with a temper, who was known to loathe the victim. However, there is one person who thinks that maybe the wrong individual has been falsely accused of murder. Jake is in luck for that person is Jessica, who begins to seek the underlying reason that Santa was killed.

The tenth novel in the ever popular "Murder She Wrote" series, A LITTLE YULETIDE MURDER, is a well written New England cozy in which readers know exactly what they are going to get since there are no surprise twists. It is sort of like going to McDonalds where the customer knows what the burger will taste like regardless of location. Still, the charm of this novel and its predecessors is that the characters and story lines remain true to the TV series. Though several TV movies are expected over the next couple of years, fans of Ms. Fletcher will find the novels are a superb replacement for the canceled weekly show.

Harriet Klausner

Jessica Fletcher is back in Cabot Cove, Maine to celebrate Christmas. But when farmer Rory Brent is shot dead, her Christmas celebrations are thrown into turmoil as she follows a set of clues to the real murderer.

This is a book that is extremely easy to read; like watching an episode of the TV show, it is uncomplicated and unpretentious. My only problem with this book is the small number of suspects which makes coming to your own conclusion that much easier.

For fans of 'Murder, She Wrote', this is probably one of the best of the series to start with. For crime novel fans, it's not exactly Agatha Christie, but it's an enjoyable read all the same.