Hall, Donald 1928–

(Donald Andrew Hall, Jr.)

PERSONAL: Born September 20, 1928, in New Haven, CT; son of Donald Andrew (a businessman) and Lucy (Wells) Hall; married Kirby Thompson, September 13, 1952 (divorced, 1969); married Jane Kenyon (a poet), April 17, 1972 (died, April 22, 1995); children: (first marriage) Andrew, Philippa. Education: Harvard University, B.A., 1951; Oxford University, B. Litt., 1953; attended Stanford University, 1953–54.

ADDRESSES: Home—Eagle Pond Farm, Danbury, NH 03230. Agent—Gerald McCauley Agency, Inc., Box 844, Katonah, NY 10536.

CAREER: Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, junior fellow in Society of Fellows, 1954–57; University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1957–75, began as assistant professor, became professor of English; full-time freelance writer, 1975–. Bennington College graduate Writing Seminars, poet-in-residence, 1993–. Broadcaster on British Broadcasting Corporation radio programs, 1959–80; host of Poets Talking (television interview series), 1974–75; has given poetry readings at colleges, universities, schools, and community centers.

MEMBER: PEN, American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

AWARDS, HONORS: Newdigate Prize, Oxford University, 1952, for poem "Exile"; Lamont Poetry Prize, Academy of American Poets, 1955, for Exiles and Marriages; Edna St. Vincent Millay Award, Poetry Society of America, 1956; Guggenheim fellowship, 1963–64, 1972–73; New York Times Notable Children's Books citation, 1979, for Ox-Cart Man; Sarah Josepha Hale Award, 1983, for writings about New England; Horn Book Honor List, 1986, for The Oxford Book of Children's Verse in America; Lenore Marshall Prize, 1987, for The Happy Man; National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry, and Los Angeles Times Book Prize in poetry, both 1989, both for The One Day; named poet Laureate of New Hampshire, 1984–89, 1995–; Associated Writing Programs Poetry Publication Award named in Hall's honor.

WRITINGS:

FOR CHILDREN

Andrew the Lion Farmer, illustrated by Jane Miller, F. Watts (New York, NY), 1959, illustrated by Ann Reason, Methuen (London, England), 1961.

Riddle Rat, illustrated by Mort Gerberg, Warne (London, England), 1977.

Ox-Cart Man, illustrated by Barbara Cooney, Viking (New York, NY), 1979.

The Man Who Lived Alone, illustrated by Mary Azarian, Godine (New York, NY), 1984.

(Editor) The Oxford Book of Children's Verse in America, Oxford University Press, 1985.

The Farm Summer 1942, illustrated by Barry Moser, Dial (New York, NY), 1994.

I Am the Dog, I Am the Cat, illustrated by Barry Moser, Dial (New York, NY), 1994.

Lucy's Christmas, illustrated by Michael McCurdy, Harcourt Brace (New York, NY), 1994.

Lucy's Summer, illustrated by Michael McCurdy, Harcourt Brace (New York, NY), 1995.

When Willard Met Babe Ruth, illustrated by Barry Moser, Harcourt Brace (New York, NY), 1996.

Old Home Day, illustrated by Emily Arnold McCully, Harcourt Brace, (New York, NY) 1996.

The Milkman's Boy, illustrated by Greg Shed, Walker (New York, NY), 1997.

POETRY

Fantasy Poets No. 4, Fantasy Press, 1952.

Exile, Fantasy Press, 1952.

To the Loud Wind and Other Poems, Pegasus, 1955.

Exiles and Marriages, Viking (New York, NY), 1955.

The Dark Houses, Viking (New York, NY), 1958.

A Roof of Tiger Lilies, Viking (New York, NY), 1964.

The Alligator Bride: Poems, New and Selected, Harper (New York, NY), 1969.

The Yellow Room: Love Poems, Harper (New York, NY), 1971.

The Gentleman's Alphabet Book (limericks), illustrated by Harvey Kornberg, Dutton (New York, NY), 1972.

The Town of Hill, Godine (New York, NY), 1975.

A Blue Wing Tilts at the Edge of the Sea: Selected Poems, 1964–1974, Secker & Warburg (London, England), 1975.

Kicking the Leaves, Harper (New York, NY), 1978.

The Toy Bone, BOA Editions, 1979.

Brief Lives: Seven Epigrams, William B. Ewart, 1983.

The Twelve Seasons, Deerfield Press, 1983.

Great Day in the Cow's House, illustrated with photographs by T.S. Bronson, Ives Street Press, 1984.

The Happy Man, Random House (New York, NY), 1986.

The One Day, Ticknor & Fields, 1988.

Old and New Poems, Ticknor & Fields, 1990.

The Museum of Clear Ideas, Ticknor & Fields, 1993.

The Old Life, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1996.

Without, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1998.

The Purpose of a Chair, Brooding Heron Press (Waldron Island, WA), 2000.

The Painted Bed, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 2002.

White Apples and the Taste of Stone: Poems, 1946–2006, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 2006.

Contributor of poetry to numerous periodicals, including the New Yorker, New Republic, New Criterion, Kenyon Review, Iowa Review, Georgia Review, Ohio Review, Gettysburg Review, Nation, and Atlantic.

PROSE

String Too Short to Be Saved: Recollections of Summers on a New England Farm (autobiography), illustrated by Mimi Korach, Viking (New York, NY), 1961, expanded edition, Godine (New York, NY), 1979.

Henry Moore: The Life and Work of a Great Sculptor, Harper (New York, NY), 1966.

As the Eye Moves: A Sculpture by Henry Moore, illustrated with photographs by David Finn, Abrams (New York, NY), 1970.

Marianne Moore: The Cage and the Animal, Pegasus, 1970.

The Pleasures of Poetry, Harper (New York, NY), 1971.

Writing Well, Little, Brown (New York, NY), 1974, 9th edition (with Sven Birkerts), HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1997.

(With others) Playing Around: The Million-Dollar Infield Goes to Florida, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1974.

(With Dock Ellis) Dock Ellis in the Country of Baseball, Coward (New York, NY), 1976.

Goatfoot Milktongue Twinbird: Interviews, Essays, and Notes on Poetry, 1970–76, University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, MI), 1978.

Remembering Poets: Reminiscences and Opinions—Dylan Thomas, Robert Frost, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Harper (New York, NY), 1978, revised edition published as Their Ancient Glittering Eyes, Remembering Poets and More Poets, Ticknor & Fields, 1992.

To Keep Moving: Essays, 1959–1969, Hobart & William Smith Colleges Press, 1980.

To Read Literature, Holt (New York, NY), 1980.

The Weather for Poetry: Essays, Reviews, and Notes on Poetry, 1977–1981, University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, MI), 1982.

Fathers Playing Catch with Sons: Essays on Sport (Mostly Baseball), North Point Press, 1985.

Seasons at Eagle Pond, illustrated by Thomas W. Nason, Ticknor & Fields, 1987.

Poetry and Ambition, University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, MI), 1988.

Here at Eagle Pond, illustrated by Thomas W. Nason, Ticknor & Fields, 1990.

Life Work, Beacon Press (Boston, MA), 1993.

Death to the Death of Poetry: Essays, Reviews, Notes, Interviews, University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, MI), 1994.

Principle Products of Portugal: Prose Pieces, Beacon Press (Boston, MA), 1995.

Willow Temple: New and Selected Stories, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 2003.

Breakfast Served Any Time All Day: Essays on Poetry New and Selected, University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, MI), 2003.

The Best Day the Worst Day: Life with Jane Kenyon (memoir), Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 2005.

Contributor of short stories and articles to numerous periodicals, including the New Yorker, Esquire, Atlantic, Playboy, Transatlantic Review, and American Scholar. Author of afterword to Jane Kenyon's Otherwise: New and Selected Poems.

PLAYS

An Evening's Frost, first produced in Ann Arbor, MI; produced Off-Broadway, 1965.

Bread and Roses, produced in Ann Arbor, MI, 1975.

Ragged Mountain Elegies (produced in Peterborough, NH, 1983), revised version published as The Bone Ring (produced in New York, NY, 1986), Story Line, 1987.

EDITOR

The Harvard Advocate Anthology, Twayne (New York, NY), 1950.

(With Robert Pack and Louis Simpson) The New Poets of England and America, Meridian Books, 1957.

Whittier, Dell (New York, NY), 1961.

Contemporary American Poetry, Penguin (London England), 1962, Penguin (Baltimore, MD), 1963.

(With Robert Pack) New Poets of England and America: Second Selection, Meridian Books, 1962.

A Poetry Sampler, F. Watts (New York, NY), 1962.

(With Stephen Spender) The Concise Encyclopedia of English and American Poets and Poetry, Hawthorn, 1963.

(With Warren Taylor) Poetry in English, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1963.

A Choice of Whitman's Verse, Faber & Faber (London, England), 1968.

Man and Boy, F. Watts (New York, NY), 1968.

The Modern Stylists, Free Press (New York, NY), 1968.

American Poetry: An Introductory Anthology, Faber & Faber (London, England), 1969.

(With D.L. Emblem) A Writer's Reader, Little, Brown (New York, NY), 1969, 9th edition, Longman (New York, NY), 2002.

The Pleasures of Poetry, Harper (New York, NY), 1971.

The Oxford Book of American Literary Anecdotes, Oxford University Press (Oxford, England), 1981.

To Read Literature: Fiction, Poetry, Drama, Holt (New York, NY), 1981, 3rd edition, Harcourt (New York, NY), 1992.

Claims for Poetry, University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, MI), 1982.

To Read Poetry, Holt (New York, NY), 1982, revised edition published as To Read a Poem, Harcourt (New York, NY), 1992.

The Contemporary Essay, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1984, 3rd edition, 1995.

To Read Fiction, Holt (New York, NY), 1987.

(With Pat Corrington Wykes) Anecdotes of Modern Art: From Rousseau to Warhol, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1990.

Andrew Marvell, The Essential Marvell, Ecco Press (New York, NY), 1991.

Edwin Arlington Robinson, The Essential Robinson, Ecco Press (New York, NY), 1993.

Oxford Illustrated Book of American Children's Poems, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1999.

Former poetry editor, Paris Review. Former member of editorial board, Wesleyan University Press poetry series; editor, University of Michigan "Poets on Poetry" series.

SIDELIGHTS: Considered one of the major American poets of his generation, Donald Hall's works explore a longing for the more bucolic past and reflect the poet's abiding reverence for nature. Although Hall gained an early success with his 1955 poetry collection Exiles and Marriages, his more recent poetry has generally been regarded as the best of his career. Often compared favorably with such writers as James Dickey, Robert Bly, and James Wright, Hall uses simple, direct language to evoke surrealistic imagery. In addition to his poetry, Hall has built a respected body of prose work that includes essays, short fiction, plays, and children's books. Hall, who lives on the New Hampshire farm he visited in summers as a boy, is also noted for the anthologies he has edited and is a popular teacher, speaker, and reader of his own poems.

Born in 1928, Hall grew up in Hamden, Connecticut, a child of the Great Depression of the 1930s, though not greatly affected by it. The Hall household was marked by a volatile father and a mother who was "steadier, maybe with more access to depths because there was less continual surface," as Hall explained in an essay for Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series (CAAS). "To her I owe my fires, to my father my tears. I owe them both for their reading." By age twelve, Hall had discovered the poet and short story writer Edgar Allan Poe: "I read Poe and my life changed," he remarked in CAAS. Another strong influence in Hall's early years was his maternal great-grandfather's farm in New Hampshire, where he spent many summers. The pull of nature became a compulsion in him so strong that decades later he bought that same farm and settled there as a full-time writer and poet.

Hall attended Philips Exeter Academy and despite early frustrations had his first poem published at age sixteen. He was a participant at the prestigious Bread Loaf Writer's Conference that same year. From Exeter, Hall went to Harvard University, where he attended class alongside other poets-in-training, among them Adrienne Rich, Robert Bly, Frank O'Hara, and John Ashbery; he also studied for a year with Archibald MacLeish. In his time at Oxford University, Hall became one of the few Americans to win the coveted Newdigate contest for his poem "Exile."

Returning to the United States, Hall spent three years at Harvard and there assembled Exiles and Marriages, a collection crafted in a tightly structured style on which Hall imposes rigid rhyme and meter. In 1957 he took a position as assistant professor of English at the University of Michigan, where he remained until 1975. During those years he wrote volumes of poetry and essays, but Hall had always contemplated returning to the rural paradise that he had found as a youth in New Hampshire. Finally he was in a position to make this a reality, and when his grandmother, who owned Eagle Pond Farm, passed away, he bought the farm, left teaching, and moved there with his second wife, poet Jane Kenyon. With one child in college at the time and another having not yet started, the move to New Hampshire was a risky one. Giving up the relative security of a tenured position at Michigan was a difficult decision, "but I did not hesitate, I did not doubt," Hall recalled in CAAS. "I panicked but I did not doubt." The collections Kicking the Leaves and The Happy Man reflect Hall's happiness at his return to the family farm, a place rich with memories and links to his past. Many of the poems explore and celebrate the continuity between generations, as the narrative voice in his poetry often reminisces about the past and anticipates the future.

Old and New Poems contains several traditional poems from earlier collections, as well as more innovative verses not previously published. Hall's well-known poem "Baseball," included in The Museum of Clear Ideas, is the poet's ode to the great American pastime and is structured around the sequence of a baseball game, with nine stanzas with nine lines each. Written following the 1995 death of his second wife to leukemia, Without reflects on the changes Kenyon's death made to his life. The Painted Bed finds Hall in another phase of the grieving process, the poems included showcasing the poet's "distinctive musical mark" and "exhibiting the terrible suffering of the bereaved with dignity and beauty," according to Book contributor Stephen Whited.

Reviewers have continued to praise Hall as the poet continues to challenge both himself and his readers while retaining a sense of tradition and the commonplace. Acclaim has been heaped, in particular, on the award-winning The One Day, with Ploughshares contributor Liam Rector dubbing it "an eloquent consummation of Modernism." The One Day consists of a single poem of 110 stanzas, divided into three sections. Each section presents a unique elderly narrative voice reflecting, in blank verse, upon the meaning of life while looking back on the past. In two of the three sections Hall alternates between male and female narrators.

In addition to his accomplishments as a poet, Hall is respected as an academic who, through writing, teaching, and lecturing, has made significant contributions to the study and craft of writing. As Rector explained, Hall "has lived deeply within the New England ethos of plain living and high thinking, and he has done so with a sense of humor and eros." In Remembering Poets: Reminiscences and Opinions—Dylan Thomas, Robert Frost, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, a 1978 work that was expanded as Their Ancient Glittering Eyes: Remembering Poets and More Poets, Hall recounts his relationship with fellow poets such as T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Dylan Thomas, and Robert Frost. His books on the craft of writing include Writing Well—in its ninth edition by 1997—and Death to the Death of Poetry. Life Work is Hall's memoir of the writing life and his tenure at Eagle Pond Farm, while his children's book Ox-Cart Man is one among several works that have established him in the field of children's literature. A fable on the cyclical nature of life, Ox-Cart Man expresses for readers "the sense that work defines us all, connects us with our world, and we are all rewarded … in measure of our effort," according to Kristi L. Thomas in School Library Journal.

Hall continues to live and work on his New Hampshire farm, a site that serves as both his abode and an inspiration for much of his work. Following his second wife's death in the spring of 1995, Hall appeared at several tributes to Kenyon's work and composed an afterword to a posthumous collection of her poetry, Otherwise: New and Selected Poems. In 2005, Hall published the memoir The Best Day the Worst Day: Life with Jane Kenyon. After initiating the book with his account of Kenyon's death, he then tells the story of their first meeting in 1969 at the University of Michigan. At the time, Kenyon was a student, and Hall a professor of literature. The couple, married for twenty-three years, had what a reviewer for Publishers Weekly referred to as, "an extraordinarily happy marriage between poets, blissful despite the difference in their ages … and her illness and chronic clinical depression." The couple lived and wrote side by side on their farm, pausing from their work to take walks and tend to their garden—the story of their "harmonious life," as a reviewer for Kirkus Reviews referred to it, is also a history of the treatments his wife had to undergo for leukemia. The same reviewer noted, "Hall depicts their kinship poignantly, sparing few details of human fragility and debilitation. The days of Kenyon's virtual imprisonment inside a sterile cell … reads like a scene in a death chamber." The reviewer for Publishers Weekly concluded that although Hall dealt with the topic of his wife's death in a collection of poems, "this heartfelt memoir should reach people who seldom read poetry."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Children's Books and Their Creators, edited by Anita Silvey, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1995.

Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series, Volume 7, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1988, pp. 55-67.

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 13, 1980, Volume 37, 1986, Volume 59, 1989.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 5: American Poets since World War II, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1980.

Hall, Donald, Riddle Rat, Warne (London, England), 1977.

Hall, Donald, The Man Who Lived Alone, Godine (New York, NY), 1984.

Hall, Donald, I Am the Dog, I Am the Cat, Dial (New York, NY), 1994.

Hall, Donald, The Best Day the Worst Day: Life with Jane Kenyon, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 2005.

PERIODICALS

Book, May-June, 2002, Stephen Whited, review of The Painted Bed, p. 85.

Booklist, March 15, 1996, Bill Ott, review of When Willard Met Babe Ruth, p. 1262; March 15, 2000, Gillian Engberg, review of The Oxford Illustrated Book of American Children's Poems, p. 1380; March 1, 2002, Ray Olson, review of The Painted Bed, p. 1079; April 15, 2003, Ellen Loughran, review of Willow Temple: New and Selected Stories, p. 1448.

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, February, 1980, Zena Sutherland, review of Ox-Cart Man, p. 110; July, 1994, Deborah Stevenson, review of The Farm Summer 1942, p. 358; October, 1994, Roger Sutton, review of Lucy's Christmas, pp. 48-49; December, 1994, Roger Sutton, review of I Am the Dog, I Am the Cat, p. 129.

Horn Book, February, 1982, Mary M. Burns, review of Ox-Cart Man, pp. 44-45; July-August, 1994, Nancy Vasilakis, review of The Farm Summer 1942, p. 441; September-October, 1994, Ann A. Flowers, review of I Am the Dog, I Am the Cat, p. 577; November-December, 1994, Elizabeth S. Watson, review of Lucy's Christmas, p. 711.

Junior Bookshelf, December, 1980, review of Ox-Cart Man, pp. 283-284.

Kirkus Reviews, August 15, 1994, review of I Am the Dog, I Am the Cat, p. 1129; October 15, 1994, review of Lucy's Christmas, pp. 1420-1421; November 1, 1984, review of The Man Who Lived Alone, p. 88; March 1, 1996, review of When Willard Met Babe Ruth, pp. 374-375; July 15, 1996, review of Old Home Day, p. 1048; March 15, 2003, review of Willow Temple, p. 416; March 15, 2005, review of The Best Day the Worst Day, p. 334.

Library Journal, April 15, 2003, review of Willow Temple, p. 128.

New York Times Book Review, January 13, 1985, Thomas Powers, review of The Man Who Lived Alone, p. 26.

Ploughshares, fall, 2001, Liam Rector, "About Donald Hall," p. 270.

Poetry, December, 2003, review of Breakfast Served Any Time All Day, p. 177; May, 2005, Vivian Gornick, "It's All In the Art," review of The Best Day the Worst Day, p. 161.

Publishers Weekly, June 13, 1977, review of Riddle Rat, p. 108; April 11, 1994, review of The Farm Summer 1942, p. 65; April 10, 1995, review of Lucy's Summer, p. 62; August 12, 1996, review of Old Home Day, p. 82; July 14, 1997, review of The Milkman's Boy, p. 83; February 25, 2002, review of The Painted Bed, p. 56; March 31, 2003, review of Willow Temple, p. 39; March 7, 2005, review of The Best Day the Worst Day, p. 57.

Quill and Quire, May, 1995, review of Lucy's Summer, p. 51.

School Library Journal, October, 1979, Kristi L. Thomas, review of Ox-Cart Man, p. 140; February, 1985, Anna Biagioni Hart, review of The Man Who Lived Alone, p. 64; January, 2000, Margaret Bush, review of The Oxford Illustrated Book of American Children's Poems, p. 121.

Sewanee Review, winter, 2000, review of Without, p. 6.