A poet's fine prose

 String Too Short to Be Saved is a collection of prose pieces written by a poet.

Donald Hall described a day in the life of his grandfather’s farm in “The Long Day.”

The piece is full of sharp images. We see Grandfather milking while reciting the poem “Lawyer Green” and we take a buggy ride to the store to pick up a bag of salt for the cattle. Since a bag of salt is a small purchase, the owner says he’ll just add the charge to the Grandfather’s bill for grain. It’s the way country people did business once.

Hall found some lovely phrases. When he was chopping firewood, he was careful because “the chopped sticks flew off sometimes like surprised birds.” When he recalled that Grandmother, in leaner times, had run a millinery shop out of the parlor, he said she sold “the hats worn to 40 churches.”

Book jackets are seldom instructive, but this one said the short pieces were stories. I’d have called them essays.

• Sources and notes:  Donald Hall, String Too Short to Be Saved; Boston: Nonpareil Books, 1979. “The Long Day” is on pp. 71-95. For other notes on this book, see “Eureka!” July 17, 2023; “A trail of the mind,” July 28, 2023; and “Eccentrics and half-lived lives,” Aug. 13, 2023.