On August 26,1922, Parrish describes in unequivocal detail a visit to the Hall home. Her mother met him at the front door, ushered him into the living room, and Hazel herself entered from a side room. Was that also her room? On that particular day, she was occupying it. It’s interesting to quote Parrish: “Miss Hall is one of the three or four greatest women poets in the United States. An ill body has confined her within the four walls o f her home since girlhood. ” Hazel herself explained to him what happened early in life: “ I went to the old Portland Academy a little while, but soon had to quit. I cou ldn ’t leave the house after that, so I took up needle work. For years and years I did this work, making monograms on linen for brides and babies—Finally my eyes failed and I had to stop. I couldn’t read very much either after tha t." She went to school only until the fifth grade. I believe the lack of extensive reading, hobnobbing with other poets—is the strength in Hazel Hall’s work. She isn’t influenced by pettiness or topicality. There is no energy or time to waste on the trivial and the fashionable. “Don ’t you think perhaps it is better not S s&be able to read so much?” Ms. Hall told him. “One selects only the best then, and gets every pleasure out o f it. ” Poets she enjoyed included Dickinson, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Elinor Wylie, and Robert Frost. She especially liked Vachel Lin- d sa y s “The Chinese Nightingale.” In prose she read Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf, James Stephens and Lyt- goes: ’s35 ton Strachey. Pretty good taste for a shut- in! As much respect and concern as Par- K r is h shows for Hall’s t; t and wellie conde- Her Brilliant Career gery ars: of by bebeing, his articles reek of scension. One of the h “ Portland Girl's Verse Lauded." years old, at the time! Ruth Hall says o f Hazel’s early “ We are not certain o f the exact nat her illness. It may scarlet fever or a fall. Her childh fore this was much like that o f any child except that she was especially sensitive and imaginative. ” Being denied a woman’s usual means o f earning a living f o t h waitressing—she took up sewing. A Trib- I ute claims Hall “ found much happiness in I beautifully embroidering bridal robes, 1 baby dresses, and Bishops cuffs." I doubt it like hell! I see bitterness in her $ sewing poems A beautiful woman such as herself was denied a normal life—her own m a r r ia ^ love affairs, home and ■ children. It had to have bothered her considerably. Providing “ piece” work for other people's bourgeois happiness. Hall’s poem “A Baby’s Dress”—if I am reading it correctly—was totally misunderstood by critics of her era. It seethes with resentment! She is so damned glad she’s done with months of labor on this piece of clothing. When she places it in the coffin-like pasteboard box, she imagines the husk of a little soul going to heaven. The dress is “ cold" and “ stiff.” And tomorrow—she comments almost with revulsion: Tomorrow will make it what hands cannot: Limp and warm with babyness. Babyness? What a noun! Something pink and gooey out of a horror movie. The Thing—a baby. Argghh! I wonder if the tyke who actually received it survived its vibes? Hall can be deadly. I don’t blame her! Did they have diapers in those days? For me, Hall’s poetry has “ bite.” It’s two-edged, even -when nicey-nicey. There’s a lot of sensuality hidden in there which is covertly expressed. A hint of lesbianism. She’s no Miss Goody Two Shoes, or some kind of invalid martyr. It’s fascinating to consider the boy she might have romped with on the playground—at Portland Academy. Little Fauntleroy “ Johnnie” Reed from up on Portland Heights. He was one year behind her! Did she note his journalistic and revolutionist runnings around in Mexico and the Soviet Union? On that bitter October day in 1920 when the Oregonian ran his front-page obituary—did Hazel notice? The adjacent column gloated on the jail sentence for birth-control advocate Dr. Marie Equi. Did Hall consider such matters? ow extraordinary was it? Most of the attention came in barely 3 years! From 1920 to her death in 1924. Her first published poem, “To an English Sparrow,” appeared in the Boston Transcript in 1916. Was that a “ war” poem? The First World War was heating in Europe. The Bolshevik revolution happening. There was anarchy and ly labor unrest in the United oets in American ry empathy for p caught up in men’s work is d wisdom and ation of beauty. States—those were turbulent, inflammatory times. The Ku Klux Klan was active in Oregon politics. And here we have a poet writing about nature, mysticism, and sewing. You see, a “ lyric” poem is not like an essay, or novel, or epic poem. It’s a brief moment, superbly rendered, in exquisite language. Both Sappho and Emily Dickinson are remembered for similar accomplishment. Another Pacific Northwest poet ought to be mentioned—Mary Barnard of Vancouver, Washington—the only other woman poet comparable to Hall in our neighborhood. She left to live for years in New York City—and to correspond with and be influenced by Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams. Her Cool Country (1940) is lucid, austere, and remarkable poetry. She left because the isolation out here was driving her nuts! excellent poetry derives from the Ir ists. The scissors snipping in - Fitting”—Barnard’s paean to dt making—remind one of Hall’s wore Anthology o f Northwest Wn 1900-1950 features both poets comparison. In 1921, Hazel Hall was awarded aJ prize by Poetry magazine, for a s$ called “ Repetitions.” The John L a ^ in November brought out her f i r s t# Curtains, with its fascinating “ Nra work” sequence. Her poems were® A Tribute claims Hall “found mu embroidering bridal robes, baby d doubt i t ‘like hell! I see bitten published in The Bookman, the New Republic, Dial, Harper’s Magazine, and the Yale Review. Stanley Braithwaite, the Eastern critic, printed 19 of Hall’s lyrics in his anthology for that year. “Nothing but her art has advanced her claims," he would write. “ It may seem a difficult thing to overcome. . . the lyrical supremacy of Sara Teasdale, but a more substantial lyrical art is on the way in the work o f Hazel Hall.” Praise would continue up to her death and afterwards. The Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature lists more than 75 entries for Hall in those few years. What of her contemporaries? What’s all this business about “ April” ? Was T.S. Eliot mocking the ladies when he opened “ The Waste Land” with: April is the crudest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land . . . Perhaps. Teasdale started it with the April poem, “ I Shall Not Care.” April, like a girl, is shaking out her rain-drenched tresses above the grave. Frankly, for me Sara is syrupy. In 1920, Edna St. Vincent Millay brought out a collection called Second April, which itself appeared shortly after her infamous “ A Few Figs from Thistles,” with its cynical quatrain: My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night: But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends— It gives a lovely light! “ Vincent” re a l lv s® ? th e ' metiei tone for worsen poets of the Twentii did he«4^eague and friend Elinor \ These fast and brilliant women cant Millay, the first woman poet to receive the Pulitzer prize, admitted she wrote “ acres of bad poetry” as propaganda against Fascism. They both experienced neurotic and complicated love affairs, voyages to Europe, frequented Greenwich Village, were courted by Edmund Wilson, and suffered fatally from alcoholism. Wylie was furious when Untermeyer described her poems as having achieved “ frigid ecstasy.” Both put up with male chauvinism. Floyd Dell, a radical who was infatuated with Millay, seriously chided her for “ Sapphic tendencies” and urged her to be psychoanalyzed. She adamantly refused! If Hall is to stand up, she must be measured against these two spunky, gifted women poets. I truly believer etry is superior to either of theirs; sixty years later it has grown in stature. It is timeless. If we read Hall today, we recognize instantly how fresh, clear, and politically appropriate she is. I rest my case with the magnificent poem, “ Made of Crepe de Chine.” A needle running in white crepe de chine Is not the frail servant of utility It was designed to be: It is an arrow of silver sunlight Plunging with a waterfall. And hands moving in white crepe de chine Are not slaves of the precedent That governs them: They are the crouching women of a fountain, Who have sprung from marble into life To bathe ecstatically In the brimming basin. A Visit by Edwin Markham The grand old man of American letters—Edwin M a rkh am - returned home to Oregon in May of 1921. He’d left at the age of 5 with his family, to go to California and Brooklyn. In the ensuing years of maturity, he penned “ The Man with the Hoe,” a poem made world-famous by the Hearst papers, which ballyhooed it, assuring his career. I admire Markham. There is a sense of moral expansiveness and inclusiveness in his work, even as it leans toward sermonizing. One Saturday he toured Crown Point, went to a ladies’ literary tea, and spoke at Lincoln High School. Stirring the crowd with remarks like this: “A complete life consists of three things: Bread, beauty and brotherhood. ” He eloquently defends the serf, the downtrodden one who is unable to rise to his proper level because other men are living in luxury and idleness from the sweat of his brow. 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