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In her sixth full-length collection, Martha Deborah Hall
explores the shifting lights and shadows that fall on a woman in
her so-called golden years, offering us a voice that sweeps the
full register from sassy to gritty to tender. In elegant free verse
and stunning twists on traditional forms, she gives us a darkly
shining world, deftly measuring out "the weight of light"--and
life.
-- Kate Gleason, Author of Measuring the Dark and Reading Darwin
While My Father Dies, Director of Writers Submit
Martha Deborah Hall's Weight of Light is playful, vibrant--both
witty and poignant. With a brash, bold, invincible voice, her poems
explode off the page in celebrations of living. While the poems
abound in the sheer joy of physical existence, the presence of time
and death renders them deeply human, universal."
-- Candace Bergstrom, Poet and Teacher living in the woods of New
Hampshire
Martha Hall has outlined her mission in life to live strong and
expects others to do likewise. In her poems she advances a new
model for deliberate and conscious aging where action is the key.
Her poems are thought-provoking, striking, and sometimes
surprising. She crisscrosses class and generational divides,
sometimes offering caustic, hard line opinions while at others,
heartwarming gestures of a giving self. Weight of Light is a
collection of intimate, powerful, and inspiring poetry. We witness
the author learn to define herself, find her own path, her own
voice. It's a rewarding read.
-- Beverly Melle, Educator and Recent Friends of the Amherst
Library Artist of the Month Exhibitor
Cover Art: Pigeon Point Lighthouse by Linnea Gershenberg
Martha Deborah Hall goes through the major decades of her life
and transforms singular moments into images and lines that speak
with a voice that is raw, spare, luminous. She holds the mirror of
reflection up to us as we see what we have overlooked as she
expresses her innermost feelings on love, faith, life, artful
living, mortality and self-actualization as daughter, wife, mother,
friend, artist and independent woman. As the years pass, she
chooses to leave behind the messy, burned parts, the
disappointments, the unloved parts, the betrayals, and instead
embraces the strength, hope and joy that brings peace and purpose
to the very essence of the self.
--Diana Lathrop-Bouchard, Rise Member, Rivier College
In her fifth full-length collection, Martha Deborah Hall
explores the gifts and vagaries of aging in a voice that is both
arresting and as clear as a vinegar-scrubbed window through which
she shows us slices of the human condition with poignancy, humor,
and a hard-earned gravitas. An astute observer of contemporary life
- both inside and out - she offers poems that sparkle with fresh
imagery, well-placed turns of phrase, and a deftly-crafted music
that never loses the clean edge of ordinary speech. From her
compelling free verse to her dazzling use of traditional forms, she
asks the vital question of the later stage of life: "As we achieve
our sunset / and head toward silver dust / what will be our
testimony?" - and answers it in kind. A must-read
--Kate Gleason, author of Measuring the Dark (selected by Phillis
Levin as the winner of the First Book Award at Zone 3 Press) and
director of Writers Submit, an editing and literary submitting
service
In Heading Toward Silver Dust, the fifth expose in the life of
Martha Deborah Hall, she travels through middle age and beyond,
staring down the questions we are afraid to ask. Reflecting upon
regrets, angry seas, poignant memories, she resolves to continue
along the uncharted road, pondering, "Whose engine will my leftover
car keys start?" With a zest for life, humorous insight, and
tangled emotions, Hall steers down the path of the human
experience, with tender hands and the grace of a seasoned
poet.
--Jane Gilman, author of Sunset, and Renewal, has accompanied
Hall, on much of her journey, as the co-facilitator of Poets
Unbound.
Cover art: Kathleen Andrews Memorial Bench
photograph by Martha Deborah Hall
The author writes evocative, succinct, graphic poems portraying the
lives of five women who survived great hardship. Through carefully
crafted persona prose poetry, Hall captures the anguish of these
women who despite their tumultuous childhoods achieved prominence.
Hall's bountiful reservoir of metaphor is unmatched.
- Helen Jackman
Each poem reflects change and transition as the women selected for
this book of poetry face the obstacles and the triumphs of their
lives. Hall offers a unique perspective as she unravels the
universal angst that propels the creative spirit. These women are
the stuff of legend, yet Hall exposes their vulnerablility with
care and empathy.
- Beverly Melle
Martha Deborah Hall clearly understands conflict, loss,
abandonment and survival. Often simple, always concise, "Inside
Out" stirs intense emotion to the core of your soul. With flashes
of revelation Martha Deborah Hall takes you exactly where she
wants; to the in-depth understanding you would never expect of five
very accomplished women.
- Rita Ralston
Martha Deborah Hall's Two Grains In Time is a journey from
innocence through loss toward wisdom. These are poems of careful
observation. The voice is direct, intimate, certain. The title poem
refers to the narrator's identical twin sister and closest
companion who predeceased her, but who she knows will be waiting
for her at the end of her life with "a cup of tea in hand." All of
the senses are sumptuously attended to in this rich first
collection by a poet of mature sensibilities. Two Grains In Time is
a poetry collection well worth all your time.
Lana Hechtman Ayers, Publisher, Concrete Wolf Poetry Chapbook
Series
If for Stephen Spender the eye is a "delicate wanderer, / Drinker
of horizon's fluid line," the eye in Martha Deborah Hall's poems
drinks its fill in more intimate territory, closer to home, closer
to the proverbial bone. Before a child on a swing embarks on her
adventure, she notices that her father had set "galvanized bolts
into the apple tree." When she comes back down to earth, the "Knots
under the sides of the cherry plank seat" have kept their sturdy
tension. As this collection swings through the arc of tragedies and
harmonies of a life, Hall's ever-vigilant eye reconnoiters a misfit
yet glorious world full of sometimes troubling and very nearly
always gratifying surprises.
Tom Daley, Poetry Instructor, Boston Center for Adult Education
Seldom does one find a poet who explores the complexities of life
events with such directness, while maintaining that twist of poetic
whim. Both the courageous honesty, and the willingness to proceed
through simple pathways to profound discernment, draw the reader
into the accessible, and somehow familiar, world. I find Two Grains
In Time to be an extremely enjoyable journey, landscaped with the
intrinsic cleansing quality of truth.
Jerri Hardesty, Publishing Editor, New Dawn Unlimited, Inc.
Publications
In her commanding second full-length collection, Martha Deborah
Hall offers readers more of what they have come to love about her
poetry: elegant craft, precise detail, concise language and
considerable emotion. These poems are concerned with the every day,
with the acutely experienced moments that make up a full life,
replete with joys and grief. Here "red leaves checker lawns," "a
snowplow clangs it's iron song," "lipstick's smeared from
so-longs," and "a first dahlia beats through the soil." When you
visit My Side of the Street arrive hungry because you'll be treated
to a feast of "leftover turkey for supper," "pizza-cake," "purple
ice cream," and Hall's thoroughly nourishing verse.
Lana Hechtman Ayers, publisher, Concrete Wolf Poetry Chapbook
Series
This is the writing of the completely engaged observer. She has
seen life in its vivid splendor, its savage malice, its occasional
grace as well as in the unsung everyday reality we all share. . . .
Losses have been suffered and grieved, gains applauded and savored.
Hall knows that life itself is inherently unfair, and has accepted
it. . . . Hall has found wisdom and some of that wisdom is shared
here. It is shared by a confident poet who has managed to express
those moments, both the bitter and the splendid as well as those
moments in between with an exceptional lack of artifice - no makeup
here. Not even a slick of lip gloss.
Hall is for real, and I can think of no higher praise.
Frances LeMoine, writer, editor, publisher
The poignancy here is palpable and compelling.
Ottone M. Riccio, author of The Intimate Art of Writing Poetry
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