Few treasures found in 'Boxes'

I look into the eyes of others and see that they make out someone old. It is an identity, old. I feel mild distaste in the eyes of the young. And I feel the same distaste when I look at 85-year-olds in the supermarket. Age is slack and ugly.

At 80, Donald Hall, former U.S. poet laureate, remains blunt and uninhibited. Even when that raises eyebrows -- are all old people really ugly? -- it makes for the best parts of his memoir "Unpacking the Boxes: A Memoir of a Life in Poetry" (Houghton Mifflin, 208 pages, $24).

As it opens, he's unpacking ancient boxes from his mother's home, which trigger memories from his childhood as Donnie, a pampered "only child who did not care for other children" growing up in Connecticut and New Hampshire. He writes of his schooling, first in a public school, then at Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, then at Harvard and Oxford. He travels; teaches; marries; has two children; divorces; meets his second wife, poet Jane Kenyon, whose suffering and death from cancer inspired many of his poetic explorations of love, death and grief; battles cancer and bipolar disorder, grows old and writes this memoir. Throughout, poetry is his living and his love -- "poetry was secret, dangerous, wicked and delicious."

But "Boxes" is not satisfying. First, as Hall admits, "this book suffers from a hole in the middle" because he omits his time with Kenyon, the subject of earlier prose and poetry. He assumes that readers know all about that, and maybe most do, but really, should one have to? Second, Hall's reminiscences often read like an impressive résumé -- there is much ground covered, but it's all surface area.

For instance, Hall mentions several times that he was promiscuous after Kenyon's death, but never really explores the why of it, or describes the current romance that ultimately ended his compulsive bed-hopping. And he tells a few anecdotes about his longtime friendship with Robert Bly, but never deeply explores the friendship or how they helped each other become great poets.

Third, Hall fails to explore his own poetic psyche; he merely trumpets, often, that poetry is his all.

"Unpacking the Boxes" is like a long People magazine article about Hall -- it's interesting in a casual way, but unrevealing. We'll have to wait for the biographies to help us really get at him.

Better yet? Read his poetry. It's far more interesting, and revealing about this fine poet.

Pamela Miller is a Star Tribune night metro editor.