Halfway Down The Hall

by Rachel Hadas

Overview

A generous gathering of the best poems, both previously published and uncollected, from Rachel Hadas's career.

Rachel Hadas brings an acute perception and a rich education to her exquisitely crafted poetry. As James Merrill wrote, Hadas's "honeyed words and bracing forms . . . over and over bring the mind to its senses." Rooted in the domestic and illuminated by Hadas's lifelong engagement with classics, the poems gathered here, many in traditional forms, draw out the relationships between life, love, time and art. This collection will be welcomed by all who love Hadas's strongly etched lines and passionate intelligence.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780819522511
Publisher:	Wesleyan University Press
Publication date:	08/01/1998
Series:	Wesleyan Poetry Series
Pages:	250
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.59(d)

About the Author

Rachel Hadas is Professor of English at Rutgers University. Her books include Indelible (2001), Living in Time (1990), Pass It On (1989), The Empty Bed (1995), A Son from Sleep (1987), and Slow Transparency (1983).

What People are Saying About This

J. D. McClatchy

“What a generous collection this is — a whole life, flesh and spirit, brought to light. Rachel Hadas has an uncanny eye, an unerring ear, urgent sympathies, and a rich imagination. This gathering is a book, not for the library but for the bedside table — to help explain the day and prepare for the night.”

From the Publisher

"Halfway Down the Hall is a remarkable achievement. The poems are urgent, contemplative, and finely wrought. In them, antiquity illuminates the present as Rachel Hadas finds in ordinary human acts 'what never was and what is eternal'."—Grace Schulman

"What a generous collection this is — a whole life, flesh and spirit, brought to light. Rachel Hadas has an uncanny eye, an unerring ear, urgent sympathies, and a rich imagination. This gathering is a book, not for the library but for the bedside table — to help explain the day and prepare for the night."—J. D. McClatchy

J.D. McClatchy

What a generous collection this is -- a whole life, flesh and spirit, brought to light. Hadas has an uncanny eye, an unerring ear, urgent sympathies, and a rich imagination. This gathering is a book, not for the library but for the bedside table -- to help explain the day and prepare for the night.

Grace Schulman

"Halfway Down the Hall is a remarkable achievement. The poems are urgent, contemplative, and finely wrought. In them, antiquity illuminates the present as Rachel Hadas finds in ordinary human acts 'what never was and what is eternal'."

Editorial Reviews

"Hadas has brought together gems from her previous 11 books and prefaced them with 33 new poems, providing her readers with a delightful retrospective celebration of her work...Throughout, Hadas deftly balances her abilities as a highly cerebral verbal artisan with strong, down-to-earth doses of womanly wisdom and insight. Highly recommended."—Library Journal

"Halfway Down the Hall is a remarkable achievement. The poems are urgent, contemplative, and finely wrought. In them, antiquity illuminates the present as Rachel Hadas finds in ordinary human acts 'what never was and what is eternal'."—Grace Schulman

"What a generous collection this is — a whole life, flesh and spirit, brought to light. Rachel Hadas has an uncanny eye, an unerring ear, urgent sympathies, and a rich imagination. This gathering is a book, not for the library but for the bedside table — to help explain the day and prepare for the night."—J. D. McClatchy

From the Publisher

"Though my preference is for/ an utterance that aims at more--/ a single splendid edifice,/ not an untidy humble nest...both are made of the same stuff,/ our ever-raveling human cloth." Starting with the torn, fragmentary images of her first collection, Starting from Troy, Hadas' interest in classical literature and translation is reflected throughout this choice from her 12 books, having developed from an emblem of the ruinous to an ability to balance memory and self-composure. With A Son from Sleep, Hadas' concerns shift with the advent of motherhood, exploring the constituent elements of sound and language as formed by children's private codes: "Ock for clock. And Ock is also hot." Her descriptions of domestic life avoid sentimentality precisely because they emerge from such sparse examinations. The collection's most recent work is its most powerful achievement, summoning a prophetic intensity that nonetheless stays close to the ground: "I must keep to my path and my path only--/ closing our cars to thunder and cicadas,/ closing our eyes to all those trembling branches,/ meekly turning our backs on opalescence,/ on the jewels of potential transformation,/ getting ready to go back down the mountain." As in the simple, moving elegy, "Searching the Scriptures," where the poet finds the Bible of a deceased friend, and with it an underscored passage of Christ's apocalyptic pronouncements, Hadas treads carefully the path between "the old prophetic strain" and "life's sheer dailiness."

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Exquisite, polished, cerebral, and yet filled with womanly, workaday reflections, Hadas's work reminds us that poetry is both celebration and a craft to be honed carefully. This book pulls together the best of 11 collections plus 33 new poems, all of which shine. (LJ 9/15/98)

Library Journal

...Hadas stakes a small claim for art's place in our lives....witty, elegant poems... -- The Progressive

Joel Brouwer