Then you looked up vaguely or you didn't - even the memory is dying. Then your whole body breathed out, and the argument ended. Heaven surfaced about you like a glass tabletop, hard and cold. Whatever you do don't turn me into poetry. Sorry: I am done crying about it but I am not done crying. An extended meditation on how death affects those left behind, "Under Sleep" is a skilfully understated, beautifully rendered elegy for the poet's partner. Formally inventive and technically sophisticated, Daniel Hall attends to the power of death to haunt every perception. The poet's voice registers as though he were walking on the bottom of the ocean, in a state of mind somewhere "under sleep," in a kind of waking dream. In Hall's hands, isolated moments of perception bloom into truly touching love elegies. The poems in "Under Sleep" were written over a period of ten years and, as a result, are densely interconnected, with lines and entire stanzas transplanted between different poems. Using styles ranging from free verse to sonnets, Sapphics, and rhymed haikus, Hall populates the book with literary and historical figures - Baudelaire, Pound, and Casanova - in poems set in China, the Middle East, Death Valley, and Italy. Throughout, the poetry is propelled by tension as the speaker struggles with his own better judgment - and against his lover's wishes - to turn the loss of the beloved into art.

About the Author
Daniel Hall is writer-in-residence at Amherst College and the author of two books of poetry, Hermit with Landscape and Strange Relation.

Reviews
"Daniel Hall's work reminds us that a poet's sharp-sightedness, the whole business of 'getting things right,' is a matter of far more than accuracy. It's a matter of - inescapably - thanksgiving." - Brad Leithauser, New York Review of Books "Under Sleep revolves around a shimmering series of oppositions: galaxy and gull, promise and loss, the fixed stars and the fugitive desires. To each Daniel Hall brings his sympathy and skepticism; from each he distills a heady elixir. This is poetry of the highest order: febrile, delicate, and immensely moving." - J. D. McClatchy"



Book Information
ISBN 9780226313320
Author Daniel Hall
Format Hardback
Page Count 72
Imprint University of Chicago Press
Publisher The University of Chicago Press
Weight(grams) 255g
Dimensions(mm) 22mm * 16mm * 1mm