Poetry. Toying with the confessional, Phil Hall's White Porcupine is a self-portrait of the artist from ages fifty to fifty-four. The creature of the title suggests (as in White Buffalo, White Whale, White Moose) the sacred primitive wild...though small...(a bit like poems); also, Death Itself (bugga-bugga); and snow rushing at the window of a moving car, years ago...tire-chains...fins; and greying hair, stubble chin; and honestly who doesn't bristle about getting old? and young St Sebastian, that doofus...naked, glowing, multi-skewered; and a black and white group photo outside a one room school house in winter...(there's mom!) each student a quill, with its name underneath. The punchline: White Porcupine is a long border-line-incomprehensible confessional poem about being miserable (oh boy!). Well, really it's about being a poet (even better!). Or, is it?
