Donald Hall on Garrison Keillor

An Old Hermit Named Garrison
"Saturday nights Jane and I used to listen to Garrison Keillor doing A Prairie Home Companion. With pleasure we read Keillor's stories in The New Yorker. We heard him speak a daily poem on his public broadcast Writer's Almanac. We did not know him. When Jane was diagnosed with leukemia, she received from his Minnesota office a package containing four cassettes of his monologues. How did Keillor know that Jane was sick? He has always known everything about poets. He's also stubborn. Once I was doing a textbook and asked his permission to reprint an essay. He refused because my publisher belonged to a conglomerate, one branch of which had published an unauthorized book about him. I prettypleased him, addressing him as "Garrison." He wrote back briefly repeating his decision and addressing me as "Mr. Hall." Later a friend of mine wrote Keillor offering him a prestigious American poetry award, explaining that the honor was for his service to the art. In a handwritten letter he expressed his gratitude, included an inscribed copy of his latest book, and refused the honor. He pointed out that he wasn't a poet. These days the Poetry Foundation, the Academy of American Poets, and Poetry Daily display a different poem online every twenty-four hours. Whatever the appetite for a daily poem publicly displayed, clearly it is satisfied. Keillor's Writer's Almanac repeats itself digitally as well as audibly—but before the digital universe, for decades, only his radio Almanac delivered a poem coast to coast, 365 days a year. No one has ever promoted poetry so widely as Garrison Keillor. Keillor also promoted poetry by drafting poets as guests for Prairie Home Companion, until he retired in 2016. Billy Collins performed seven times that I know of. My total was three. My first appearance celebrated the 100th birthday of Keillor's St. Paul homeboy F. Scott Fitzgerald, in the show's St. Paul theater. I came equipped without a script but with a schedule—when to arrive, when to eat, when to rehearse—and backstage I found an improvised cafeteria where I assembled my supper. I awaited rehearsal. There was no rehearsal. No one told me what was I supposed to do. Then I discovered: every Saturday night Keillor appeared to make up the show as he went along. For actors performing skits, and for the soundman's genius, during the week Keillor must have given a hint. Daily, when he drove from his house to his workplace, he daydreamed his monologues. When he performed them, he watched minutes elapse on a clock, adding or subtracting to fit the time remaining. For his Fitzgerald birthday party he invited a bunch of writers, mostly novelists, and sat us in the theater's front row, before a ramp that led up to the stage. I heard Keillor speak about Fitzgerald's great novel, then announce, "I'm casting Donald Hall as Jay Gatsby." It was the first I had heard of it. He handed me a script, gave me directions out loud, and everything turned out all right. With Garrison Keillor, everything always turns out all right. On my second visit, I was his main guest, and before the show he asked me to come watch him shave. Yes, he shaves for his radio show. As he plied a straight razor he told me that during the program we two should say limericks to each other. Did I know any? I said I knew one that wouldn't do on public radio: There was an old hermit named Dave Who kept a dead whore in his cave. He said, "I'll admit I'm a bit of a shit, But think of the money I save." He said it was fine and dictated another for me to say after I had finished with Dave. We would perform our limericks after a musical interlude, first me and then him. During the show, as the band slowed down just before our limericks, Keillor changed his mind. "Let's go back and forth," he told me. "We'll one-up each other." It came out all right. The last time I did it, the show was at Tanglewood in 2008, the year I turned eighty, and Linda drove us to a motel in Lenox. Midafternoon we climbed onto a rattling bus to take us to the Tanglewood auditorium. It was eight times the size of the St. Paul theater, and every seat would be occupied by a western Massachusetts summer bottom. Another two thousand fans sat on the grass outside, listening to the show through speakers. Half an hour before things got started, Keillor approached Linda and me. Linda had never observed his actual face. It bulges here, it bulges there, possibly assembled from spare parts. Any sense of menace vanishes as soon as he speaks. He caresses whom he addresses. He spoke of books I had published since our last meeting, then warmed up the audience for twenty minutes. He didn't need to warm anybody up, but he liked warming people up. Half an hour into the show, staffers lugged me across the stage, set me on a chair, and Keillor kneeled down beside me to chat. I said my poems, staff carried me back to Linda, actors did a skit. Then Inga Swearingen, a pretty young singer, did three songs. A cappella, she sang "Summer Kitchen," a twelve-line poem of mine about Jane. She made up the tune and I loved every note. After the intermission I said more poems. Garrison asked me if I kept livestock at the farm. I told him no and then corrected myself. I had a cat. Garrison noted that it was difficult to milk a cat, and my handlers carried me back to Linda. When the radio show stopped at seven, Garrison didn't stop. He walked around the auditorium saying goodbye. The inside crowd straggled out, and the outside crowd filed in. He had talked for two and a half hours, from warm-up to show to first farewell, and now he extended himself another thirty minutes, singing variations on "I'm tired and I want to go home." Then everybody went home."

— A Carnival Of Losses: Notes Nearing Ninety by Donald Hall
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