f j Jr 5* a No T ra Brief b alt Curtis £ Ort Mother’s Day, May 11, 1924, Hazel Hall-the^l woman I believe to be our finest poet-died. Her obituary made the front pages of both the Oregonian and the OregonJournal, whose headlines screamed: SWEET VOICE OF HAZEL HALL IS HUSHED BY DEATH. Who Would you believe that a 38-year-old working-class woman, invalid from the age of 12, could attain a critical reputation as one of America’s finest women poets? Compared with Sara Teasdale, Elinor Wylie, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and even Emily Dickinson. She did all this from a wheelchair, after years of doing close needlework, ruining her eyesight, embroidering for wealthy ladies in Portland's West Hills. As her eyes weakened, she turned to writing poetry—and within the short space of 8 years established a brilliant career. Phil Parrish, the author of Before the Covered Wagon, who had taken a special interest in her, visiting the shut-in at her home, began the Journal’s obit: "Just at the full blooming of the spring, which she loved so ardently, Hazel Halt, Oregon’s foremost poet and one of the finest lyric voices in America, passed away Sunday morning at her home at Lucretia P la c& ^ J Harriet Monroe of the influential Poetry magazine of Chicago bemoaned her loss, as did the anthologist Louis Unter- meyer. In his 1925 Modern American Poetry, he comments upon the four poems printed: “No anthologist of the period can afford to overlook them. ” Within a fortnight The New Republic published the last two poems she wrote, “ Slow Death” and “ Riddle.” Hazel had a premonition that she was going to die. Her sister Ruth Hall—a librarian at Jefferson High School, her secretary, confidant and best f r ie n d - gathered together these last mystical and haunting poems. Entitled The Cry of Time, they were published posthumously in a numbered edition of 1000 copies by E.P. Dutton. On May 21, a meeting of Portland writers and poets gathered at the Casco Building. They were led by the literary doyenne Mabel Holmes Parsons. Hall’s friend, Anne Shannon Monroe of Singing in the Rain fame, was there. After Hall’s body was cremated, this group assisted wus this today? in placing her ashes in the brass urn and niche of the Lilac Room, at the Portland Memorial Cemetery. Fitting as the last resting place for a poet, the site, with its jrp jewel-like Tiffany windows and eerie deco * J decor, must have cost the family a fortune. The editorial page of the stodgy Oregonian, within the week following her death, lavished fulsome eulogy, while tossing barbs at e.e. cummings and other modernists. “Poets are so few. Here is one who writes witty rhymes, and there is another who weeps incessantly, and yonder is the fellow who has bruised a butterfly and wants the world to see what he has done. There are others who begin their aimless verses, their rhythmless, rhymeless verses with small letters, and bare a petty incoherency for all to marvel at. And some posture, and some flout God and ask if they are not brave fellows, indeed. But true poets are few. Hazel Hall was a poet. ” The jeremiad ends by quoting one of Hall’s April poems, a wistful one A " L : . I shall not be singing Of April this year.. . And I am tired of hearing things too often said. These slight lines are so typical of the candid, forthright poet who lived a difficult life devoid of self-pity. “When anyone speaks of my sister as crippled, I always feel rebellious, because she gave the impression of such abundant health, ” her sister Ruth said. “She enjoyed living immensely—her days were never long enough for all the activities she wished to press into them. Except that she did not walk, she was in good health until about six weeks before her death.” There is a bit of steel in Hall’s lyrics, a pinprick, which outclasses the society- gal sophistication and chi-chi romanticism of the other Georgian poets. More than this, I’m going to argue the case that Hall is one of the first “ feminist” poets in American poetry. She expressly exhibits woman poet? And why is she nearly forgottej m ft extraordinary empathy for the plight of iCfe were £ other women who are caught up in drudgery which wears away their lives. Women’s work is her theme, but also women’s patience and wisdom and the J jyea t ion of beauty. A Ph.D. could be earned by someone analyzing and prais-W ing poems like “ Inheritance,” “Any Wo- on from grandmothers to grandman’s Death,” “Made of Crepe de daughters—after someone dies. Lace, Chine,” “Light Sleep,” and “ Instruction.” applique, white on white, knitted and emHas nobody done it before me? How could Hazel Hall drop out of sight these last sixty years, like a polished jade stone dropped in the pool at the Japanese Gardens? Her verbal stitchery and graceful rhymes are simply faultless. Take for example “ Instruction ' My hands that guide a needle In their turn are led Relentlessly and deftly As a needle leads a thread. Other hands are teaching My needle: when I saw I feel the cool, thin fingers Of hands I do not know. They urge my needle onward. They smooth my seams, until The worry of my stitches Smothers in their skill. ■ A ’ - • - : A r. A ■ - A ■. All the tired women, Who sewed their lives away, Speak in my deft fingers As I sew today The poem is so empathetic, it’s almost creepy! Yet she is reassured by women who have done similar work, before her. Her triumph, her escape from such te- dious oppression, even as her health fal- r • tered, was to become a paid poet of renown. While I’m being irreverent, isn’t there a Hitchcockian flavor to book titles such as Curtains, Walkers—by a person ’ who can’t—and The Cry of Time? A shadowy, psychical mystery is in her poetry and life—an attempt to control the uncontrollable. Finally she relinquished herself to death. I’m not ashamed to ask it—Did she ever have an orgasm? There tinglings and pricklings in limbs which could not walk. Recalling the skippings of girlhood, she felt “ hurt s u rp r i^ g every time she glimpsed a s ta irw m Q S ^ | ^C^^b inymous generations are involved here. Art work, magnificent sewing craft, flawless pieces of cloth which are passed liqu6, w it on hit , k i t a e - broidered things from old trunks and attics—women have done this patient, delicate work for 100s of years. My God, I'm a man! Why am I writing about this? : This other aspect of Hall’s creative “art” is her needlework. Of museum quality. There are homes in Portland’s West Hills which contain artifacts, clearly described in such poems as “ The Listening Macaws” and “A Baby’s Dress.” Bookman Charles Seluzicki, while visiting - special collections at the University of Oregon library, discovered one 1 . of her embroidered j f ' S / C handkerchiefs. J o , - ’ ’. X ' 44 Clinton St. Quarterly— Fall/Winter 1988
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