Red Dust; A Review of H.Palmer Hall's Reflections on Writing, Publishing, and Other Things by Joyce Metzger.
H. Palmer Hall. Reflections on Writing, Publishing, and Other Things. Pecan Grove Press, 2003. ISBN# 1-931247-03-x. Paper. 48 pp. $5.00.

H. Palmer Hall edits and pub­lishes books as co-director of Pecan Grove Press. He has four previously published books and his poems, essays and short stories have ap­peared in numerous alternative press publications. H. Palmer Hall is a library director and teaches English at St. Marys University in San Antonio, Texas.

Clarity and coherence vibrate twin strings to resonate throughout this slender volume. H. Palmer Hall is skilled. This proficiency does not allow for mistakes and needs only an affirmation that the deed has been committed. And indeed it has. Hall describes his aversion to, but the necessity of, rejection and acceptance. He describes a unique twist; of teaching students on one subject (A Farewell to Arms) while his thoughts, and eventually his words, are on the Beats; Jack, Lucien, William, Allen and the murder of Dave Kammer. Later, the author returns to his office to reject poems. "Some of them are by very good poets who submit to your press and its depressing to have to reject good poems and good writers."

"A Story About An Old Woman and Poetry" is an attention grabber. Humanness is rediscovered, as the author notices, then becomes enthralled by the beauty of a quiet, contemplative older woman. She passes to him the lesson of life; that death too, links us together in our humanness. In her last days, this stranger left a lasting impression upon H. Palmer Hall.

We are all tied to our birthplace by spreading roots that reveal to others where we came from; our status and educational level through language, habits, and even the love of, and choice of, music.

"Most of the Texas country music I heard growing up was sung in the language my relatives spoke back in the Big Thicket and it seemed natu­ral to us." "The music was in the language. It was in the spoken sounds of the black and white people of.. .Texas, the songs of..." Lipscomb, Hooker, Joplin, Winter, Richards, Young, and the Big Bopper laced those sounds. Hall walks slow, and close, down memory lane, reminiscing about Fats Domino, Jimmy Clanton, Willie Nelson, Jerry J. Walker, Townes Van Zandt and Waylon Jennings.

Earth's indwelling pulse beat buoys the spirit within, and H. Palmer Hall gives a portion of himself, perhaps to reflect, or perhaps to create an equilibrium with touchable dimensions as a shield against the pandemonium he encounters, more and more, in today's world. Not a whisper of querulous poisoned barbs, not a drop of the cacophony resulting from churlish indignation will be discovered in the eleven short chapter articles of Reflections on Writing, Publishing, & Other Things.

"Poetry in Vietnam" creates a startling inner photograph. One to save, to think about, and contemplate as guns and cannons roar. "In those days, not writing, I lived poetry, sucking it in and blowing it out. In Dak To, when I listened to my radio, heard a boy named Bao report on American convoys leaving camp for Pleiku and heard the jets strafe and napalm his position, the poetry that is Yeats and the poetry that is Stevens ('0 blessed rage for order, pale Ramon!') mingled with red dust and death."

H. Palmer Hall has lived. These words are reflective, pensive and mesmerizing. In the turmoil of to­day, his thought patterns are very welcome. This book is a collective of heart treasures.