Hermit with Landscape: Yale Series of Younger Poets

The winning volume in the 1989 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is Hermit with Landscape by Daniel Hall. As James Merrill, distinguished poet and judge of the competition, has said: "Daniel Hall is a patient craftsman, a weigher of each word. Smaller and more lucid than their model, his imitations of life place no burden upon us; rather, their deftness lightens our step. Here mind once again outdances the monumental."

 

Tidal

 

A moth hove out of fog. All I heard

was the incessant dissolving

of the surf, attenuated, drawn

through eggshell, bone and ash

as through the walls of another room.

 

After dark, before a glass,

in a hall reeling with shadows,

a pair of eyes resolved. At last

they shone: they shone

like phosphorescent moons.