Tall, Deborah 1951-2006 (Deborah Anne Tall)

PERSONAL:

Born March 16, 1951, in Washington, DC; died of breast cancer, October 19, 2006, in Ithaca, NY; daughter of Max M. (an engineer) and Selma Tall; married David Weiss (a writer), September 9, 1979; children: Zoe Frances, Clea Doris. Education: University of Michigan, B.A., 1972; Goddard College, M.F.A., 1979.

CAREER:

Freelance writer in Ireland, 1972-77; CK Studios, New York, NY, typographical designer, 1978-80; University of Baltimore, Baltimore, MD, assistant professor of English, 1980-82; Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, NY, associate professor, 1982-89, professor of English, 1989-2006.

MEMBER:

Associated Writing Programs, Academy of American Poets, Poetry Society of America, Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment, Authors Guild, International Parliament of Writers, PEN, Poets House.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Jules and Avery Hopwood Award for poetry, and Michael R. Gutterman Award for poetry, both from University of Michigan, both 1972; Yaddo fellowships, 1982, 1984, and 1991; faculty research grants, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, 1983, 1986, 1989, 1995, and 1996; Ingram Merrill Foundation grant, 1987; Macdowell fellowship, 1998; Kathryn A. Morton Prize for poetry, 1999; Faculty Scholarship Award, Hobart and Smith Colleges, 2001.

WRITINGS:

Eight Colors Wide (poetry), London Magazine Editions (London, England), 1974.

Ninth Life (poetry), Ithaca House (Ithaca, NY), 1982.

The Island of the White Cow: Memories of an Irish Island (nonfiction), Atheneum (New York, NY), 1986.

Come Wind, Come Weather (poetry), State Street Press (Chicago, IL), 1988.

(Coeditor) Taking Note: From Poets' Notebooks, Hobart and William Smith Colleges Press (Geneva, NY), 1991.

From Where We Stand: Recovering a Sense of Place (nonfiction), Knopf (New York, NY), 1993.

(Editor, with Stephen Kuusisto and David Weiss) The Poet's Notebook: Excerpts from the Notebooks of Contemporary American Poets, Norton (New York, NY), 1995.

Summons: Poems, foreword by Charles Simic, Sarabande Books (Louisville, KY), 2000.

A Family of Strangers, Sarabande Books (Louisville, KY), 2006.

Contributor to anthologies, including Roots and Flowers, Travelers Tales: Ireland, Writing Poems, American Nature Writing, 1996, and Where We Stand: Women Poets on Literary Tradition. Contributor of poems, essays, and reviews to periodicals, including Antaeus, Antioch Review, Chelsea, Georgia Review, Indiana Review, Iowa Review, Fence, Listener, London Magazine, Nation, Partisan Review, Ploughshares, Poet and Critic, Poetry, Southern Review, Tikkun, and Yale Review. Editor, Seneca Review, 1982-2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Deborah Tall was an American poet, nonfiction author, and editor. In an appreciative foreword to Tall's poetry collection Summons: Poems, Yugoslav-born American poet Charles Simic wrote: "The art of prosody, of which Deborah Tall is a master, is a jeweler's art. It is about ascertaining the weight of words, measuring each one of them in turn against silence and time…. As we read, line by line, sounds turn into music, words and images grow in meaning." In 2006 Tall succumbed to a particularly aggressive form of breast cancer, dying in the company of family and friends at her home in Ithaca, New York.

In Summons, Tall's fourth collection of poetry, she considered such topics as war, death, and daybreak, in a series of short poems that reflect on the consoling power of nature. In "Watch" she wrote: "The counting of blessings / starts low to the ground … Where you eddy / is who you are." Sandra Vonlienen wrote in Poetic Voices that, for her, each poem "was a finished novel. Each line a page of its own filled with perfectly chosen words that held me for just a split second, allowing the images to form in my mind. And though most of the images were of inconsequential, daily things, they suddenly became life-size pictures, major events at the turn of a word."

Tall's nonfiction examines the sense of space and home and its absence. Her 1986 book, The Island of the White Cow: Memories of an Irish Island, is a memoir of her five-year stay in Ireland, where daily life was lived simply, and the people maintained age-old traditions. When she took a job teaching in Geneva, New York, she adjusted slowly to her new locale. In the opening pages of From Where We Stand: Recovering a Sense of Place, Tall wrote: "I have never really belonged to an American landscape." This is the beginning of a meditation on the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, to which she moved in 1982. Shifting between personal observations and literary/historical reflections, she described her attachment (or lack of) to a place both beguiling and benighted. All in all, Tall wrote that "Geneva has many of the griefs of a city … but none of the advantages," but as she ruminated on the importance of a home, she found comfort in the natural beauty around her. She and her family, seeking a "more lively, responsive human community," ultimately moved to the nearby college town of Ithaca.

In 1995, Tall coedited The Poet's Notebook: Excerpts from the Notebooks of Contemporary American Poets, bringing together excerpts from the working notebooks of twenty-six American poets. Included are the notebooks from such distinguished and eclectic voices as Rita Dove, Stephen Dunn, Carolyn Forché, Donald Hall, Garrett Hongo, Joy Harjo, Donald Justice, Yusef Komunyakaa, James Merrill, Mary Oliver, Charles Simic, and William Stafford. Simic, in his foreword to The Poet's Notebook, wrote: "This is the kind of book in which you'll want to underline a lot. There are good stories here, quirky observations on life and literature, jokes, wonderful quotes, and even passages of sensible advice and wisdom that will delight your grumpiest friends."

The 2006 title A Family of Strangers explores Tall's connection—or lack thereof—with her Ukrainian Jewish heritage. As a child she became aware that her parents held much of their former lives secret, their family stories beginning not long after their immigration to the United States around the time of World War II. Compelled to learn more about her genealogy, Tall uncovered a vast amount of information about her Jewish relatives and the agonies they underwent before escaping to America. Writing for the Library Journal, Robert Kelly remarked that the book "reads like an essay, simultaneously lyrical and hard-hitting." Kelly continued that Tall "possesses a practicality that is direct, organized, investigative, and concise." A Publishers Weekly reviewer commented that Tall "offers new formal avenues for memoir while providing a necessary piece of the ever-unfolding puzzle of 20th-century Jewish diaspora." Donna Seaman described the book in a review for Booklist as "utterly [Tall's] own in its beautiful and sage distillation."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Tall, Deborah, From Where We Stand: Recovering a Sense of Place, Knopf (New York, NY), 1993.

Tall, Deborah, Summons: Poems, foreword by Charles Simic, Sarabande Books (Louisville, KY), 2000.

Tall, Deborah, Stephen Kuusisto, and David Weiss, editors, The Poet's Notebook: Excerpts from the Notebooks of Contemporary American Poets, Norton (New York, NY), 1995.

PERIODICALS

American Studies International, February, 1997, Bernard Mergen, review of From Where We Stand, p. 104.

Belles Lettres, summer, 1993, Renee Haussman Shea, review of From Where We Stand, p. 37.

Booklist, May 1, 1993, Donna Seaman, review of From Where We Stand, p. 1566; October 15, 2006, Donna Seaman, review of A Family of Strangers, p. 16.

Christian Science Monitor, June 2, 1993, Mary Warner Marien, review of From Where We Stand, p. 14.

Library Journal, January, 1986, Christine King, review of The Island of the White Cow: Memories of an Irish Island, p. 79; February 1, 1993, David Schau, review of From Where We Stand, p. 105; November 15, 2000, Judy Clarence, review of Summons, p. 73; October 1, 2006, Robert Kelly, review of A Family of Strangers, p. 72.

New York Times Book Review, March 16, 1986, Vicki Freeman, review of The Island of the White Cow, p. 18.

Publishers Weekly, December 6, 1985, Genevieve Stuttaford, review of The Island of the White Cow, p. 66; August 14, 2006, review of A Family of Strangers, p. 190.

Utne Reader, January, 1994, Paul Gruchow, review of From Where We Stand, p. 118.

Virginia Quarterly, autumn, 2001, review of Summons, p. 145.

Women's Review of Books, July, 1993, Jan Zita Grover, review of From Where We Stand, p. 22.

OTHER

Planet of the Blind,http://kuusisto.typepad.com/ (September 11, 2007), Stephen Kuusisto, "My Dear Friend."