tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-59409424063945394712024-03-12T19:52:18.782-07:00Hamden's Donald HallOn September 16, 2011, the Hamden Public Library and the Town of Hamden honored native son and nationally renowned poet, Donald Hall. At that time many area residents came forward with thoughts and memories of Mr. Hall and his life in Hamden which we have begun to collect here on this blog. Feel free to comment on what you find here or, if you have additional items you would like to add, please contact the library.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5940942406394539471.post-23919013485205063942014-09-08T07:56:00.000-07:002014-09-08T07:56:11.839-07:00New Book of Donald Hall Essays Coming in December<article class="article page-content">
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Donald Hall's newest book, <i><b>Essays after Eighty</b> </i>is due out in from Houghton, Mifflin & Harcourt in December. While you're waiting to read this latest collection of wit and wisdom from 'Hamden's Man in the Granite State', be sure to check out the article below written last year about Mr. Hall by Mike Pride from <i>New Hampshire Magazine. </i>(Reprinted with permission.)</span></span></span></h1>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">A Lion in Winter </span></span></h1>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span></span><h3 class="deck">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">An Encounter With Poet Donald Hall</span></span></h3>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span></span><div class="by-line">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">By Mike Pride</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="dropcap">F</span>or decades Donald Hall wrote odes that
raised the dead and paid homage to New Hampshire's rural past. His big
poems ranged from the whimsical to the apocalyptic, from the rules of
baseball to humanity's penchant for self-destruction. Now he is 84 and
the poems come no more.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">But when work is life, every end is a beginning. In the solitude of his
family farm in Wilmot, Hall rises mornings to strengthen nouns and slay
adverbs, just as he did when he was writing poetry. Discovering, to his
delight, that old age is the secret to truer prose, he has reinvented
himself as an essayist. Or perhaps he has willed this to be. Either way,
editors at the <em>New Yorker</em>, <em>Playboy</em>, <em>The American Scholar</em> and other magazines buy his essays when he is ready to let them go.</span></span><br />
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</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">Writing prose in his favorite chair. Hall's New Yorker essay, "Out the
Window," is ostensibly about the view from that chair in wintertime.</span></span><br />
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Writing prose in his favorite chair. Hall's New Yorker essay, "Out
the Window," is ostensibly about the view from that chair in wintertime.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>Then I sat in my blue chair</i></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>with blueberry bagels and strong<br />
black coffee reading news,</i></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>the obits, the comics, and the sports.</i></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>Carrying my cup twenty feet,</i></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>I sat myself at the desk</i></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>for this day's lifelong</i></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>engagement with the one task and desire.</i></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>-From "An Old Life" by Donald Hall </i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">He credits Wendy Strothman, his agent, with suggesting he try prose
again. She asked him to write a book about Christmas at Eagle Pond, the
site of the farm where he has lived since 1975. He also spent boyhood
summers haying there with his grandfather, but he was never at the farm
for Christmas in those years. This was no obstacle. More than half a
century ago, while writing "String Too Short to Be Saved," a memoir of
those boyhood summers, he had imagined an abandoned railroad on nearby
Ragged Mountain. Its rusted tracks led him to the writing he recalls as
the best in the book. Surely he could imagine Christmas at the farm in
1940.</span></span><br />
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<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">As slight and sentimental as the Christmas idea sounds, Hall seized on
the challenge. He is a man with a past and a place, and writing this
book countered whatever gloom he might have felt when his poetic muse
vanished. "I had a ball writing it," he says. "All the people from
'String' came to life again, and as soon as they opened their mouths, I
knew exactly what they were going to say." When the manuscript was done,
the pleasure of writing it lingered.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">It cuts against conventional wisdom - and perhaps reason - that a very
old man should improve his game in any way, but that is what happened
with Hall. "As poetry went, prose came," he says from the same blue
chair where he sat when I first interviewed him 30 years ago. It sounds
like a miracle when he says it, a surprise, as in some sense it is. But
when I dig out that old interview, I see that I asked him then about a
sentence he was pondering as a future epitaph. We were talking about a
rough patch in his work. "I was passive," he said. "I was a chip on the
stream. Well, man is a bird that can change the shape of his beak.
Wowwee! You can change. You can get better."</span></span><br />
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Donald Hall in his home.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">There you have it: Man is a bird that can change the shape of his beak.
In his youth Hall wrote reviews in a style he describes as academic.
Early on, he developed a voice as a writer that sounded like no one
else's, but his mature prose, as he sees it, was "too bejeweled." Now,
embracing the slower pace of old age, he approaches his essays in memoir
as he did his poems, writing dozens of drafts. The changes he makes may
seem minute - deleting a comma, adjusting the pace or shifting the end
of a sentence to the beginning - but they add up to greater precision.
Aware that his prose is thinner than it used to be, he thickens it with
particularity.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">When the book was done, Hall began an essay called "Out the Window," a
meditation on old age that unfurls from the view through the farmhouse
window nearest the blue chair. Six months into writing it, he knew it
was pretty and lyrical, but experience told him it needed a
counter-movement, something to lift it above the ordinary. After lunch
at an art museum one day, his companion, Linda Kunhardt, was pushing him
toward the galleries in a wheelchair. A guard leaned over and asked
him, "Did we enjoy our din-din?" Almost immediately the writer's mind
turned the insult into the gift it was: the guard had given him the
counter-movement for "Out the Window." David Remnick, editor of the New
Yorker, liked the essay and took it for the magazine, which published it
last January. By then, Hall had begun more essays, the sage looking
back on the events of a long life.</span></span><br />
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</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">The lion in winter, it turned out, was still a lion.</span></span><br />
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Hall's daily view is reflected in the window by his favorite chair.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><em>When I walk in my house I see pictures,<br />
bought long ago, framed and hanging<br />
- de Kooning, Arp, Laurencin, Henry Moore - that I've cherished and
stared at for years, yet my eyes keep returning to the masters of the
trivial - a white stone perfectly round, tiny lead models of baseball
players, a cowbell, a broken great-grandmother's rocker,<br />
a dead dog's toy - valueless, unforgettable detritus that my children will throw away as I did my mother's souvenirs of trips<br />
with my dead father, Kodaks of kittens,<br />
and bundles of cards from her mother Kate.</em></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><em>-From "The Things" by Donald Hall</em></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">Don and I are old friends. Several times a year, often with a brown bag
on my front seat, I drive out to his house. In the bag are liverwurst
sandwiches with Vidalia onion slices and hot mustard or roast beef
sandwiches with lots of horseradish and a little mayo. As a sop to
healthful living, I make them on whole-grain bread. Or we ride to a
nearby diner that we still call Blackwater Bill's, though the name is
out of date. There the waitress coddles Don, as local people and women
in general tend to, and he eats hot dogs with relish and spicy mustard.
Before and after lunch, we sit in his living room, he in the blue easy
chair, I in a straight-back where his cat can press her face into my
palm and beg a rub. I can never remember whether she is Thelma or
Louise, knowing only that one died, one survives. Don lights Pall Mall
Oranges as we talk, yet another pleasure of the mouth for a man who
likens poetry, and especially the sound of poetry, to oral sex.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">Most of his literary contemporaries are dead or ailing. He was a poet
of death and decay, writing elegies for his father and others, odes to
cellar holes, stonewalls and old horses and poems about the agony of
losing his wife, Jane Kenyon. Nearly 18 years after Kenyon's death from
leukemia, any reminder of it moves him to mournful remembrance. It is
different now with his contemporaries. W.D. Snodgrass is gone, Adrienne
Rich gone, James Wright long gone. His once-robust correspondence with
Robert Bly has slowed to a trickle.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
In September, when Don's friend Louis Simpson died, I sent him the
obituary from the New York Times. He replied by describing his last
contacts with Simpson, the only friend who called him "Donald," and
added: "A funny thing happens, predictable, I suppose. When you are 84
years old and an old, old friend dies, you feel a moment of melancholy,
and a moment of affection - but you do not burst into tears, you do not
run around the house screaming. What else was he going to do? Rumor has
it that all of us die."</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Of course, Don thinks about his own death too, but he did that in poems
for decades. Sixty years ago, he ended a poem about the birth of his
son with these lines: "We twenty-two and twenty-five, / who seemed to
live forever, / observe enduring life in you / and start to die
together." He does not relish the physical act of dying. "I don't want
to turn blue," he says. And because none of his children or
grandchildren wish to move to the farm, he worries what will become of
the house and its contents, including the things his family saved over
the generations. "Most of your things are going into the dumpster," he
says. He confronted his anxiety over this in "The Back Chamber," his
last poetry collection.</span></span><br />
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The guest room in Hall's home.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i> </i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>I lie on the painted bed</i></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>diminishing, concentrated</i></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>on the journey I undertake</i></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>to repose without pain</i></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>in the palace of darkness,</i></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>my body beside your body.</i></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>-From "The Painted Bed" by Donald Hall</i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">The realization that he could no longer write poetry crept up on him.
By 2007, "Not much I did was as good as it felt," Hall says. Sound had
been the key. Form and narrative seemed to take care of themselves once
he got the sound right, especially the long vowels, but also the ring
and clash of consonants. When he began struggling, the poems he finished
were sometimes witty and well-turned, but they lacked the audacious
language and pleasing images that had distinguished his work. He also
found he could not start poems. They had often begun with a line or two
whose meaning was unclear. "It would come into my head," he says. "I
didn't know where it was going, but I would surrender to it and let it
go where it carried me." The lines - the inspiration - stopped coming.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">Six years ago Don served as poet laureate of the United States. Two
years ago President Obama placed the National Medal of Arts around his
neck. His poetry earned him these honors, and losing the ability to
write it could have hastened his decline. But he took it
philosophically. "I don't miss poetry," he says. "Maybe one of these
days a poem will come forward, but I don't think about it." He also knew
he was not the first poet to suffer such a loss. "No poet in the world
has written his best poetry in his eighties," he says. He is certain the
two strong poems in Robert Frost's last collection were written decades
before the book was published. Even the work of Thomas Hardy, a
favorite of Don's, withered in old age.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">The long arc of life has changed the way he sees his own work. In his
youth he thought the reason to write, beyond the hope of wooing
cheerleaders, was the quest for immortality. Now he knows better.
Archibald MacLeish, one of the best-known poets of the mid-20th century,
won three Pulitzer Prizes between 1932 and 1958, but who reads MacLeish
today? "I mostly think nobody's going to remember my work," Don says,
"but it doesn't stop me from wanting to write."</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">In part because of those summers on the farm with his grandparents
during the 1930s and early '40s, Don has always regarded old people with
appreciation and curiosity. A recurring theme in his elegies was the
way one generation succeeds the next, but time cancels them all, the
past eliding with the present. Now he is the old man of the family. He
naps each day. He travels less. He walks with a cane or a wheeled walker
and avoids stairs. His knees buckle sometimes, and he fears falling.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
These infirmities do not define him. The love of Linda Kunhardt
comforts him. Kendel Currier, his cousin, keeps him in touch with the
outside world by e-mail. His carrier leaves the snail-mail on a chair in
the kitchen. When he reads in public, the audience stills and leans in
to catch the words of his gravelly voice. But, most important, he works.
"Pretty much every day I make something better," he says. "The ability
to write something is absolutely essential."</span></span><br />
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One of the many tableaus of incidental art formed by necessity and time in the barn on his 200-year-old farm.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">Often at readings Don has spoken of the opposite ways readers respond
to "Ox Cart Man." Like the children's book of the same name, the poem
describes the cycle of a farmer's life. All year the farmer grows
potatoes, shears sheep, sugars maples, makes birch brooms, builds a
cart. In October he loads the cart and walks to Portsmouth beside the ox
that pulls it. At the market he sells everything, including ox and
cart. Then he goes home and starts anew. Some readers pity the farmer
for having to toil so hard and then turn around and do it all over
again. Others find his life useful and fulfilling.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i> </i></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>We made in those days tiny identical rooms inside our bodies which
the men who uncover our graves will find in a thousand years shining and
whole.</i></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>-From "Gold" by Donald Hall</i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">For Don Hall, there has never been any ambivalence about the farmer in
"Ox Cart Man." Whether with pitchfork or pen, work that you love, not
the product of that work, makes life worth living. This has been Don's
faith, and in old age he has been rewarded for it.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
He is a happy man.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><hr />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><h3>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Reading Suggestions</span></span></h3>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Author of this story Mike Pride is a writer and historian. He is editor emeritus of the <i>Concord Monitor</i>,
where he ran the newsroom for 30 years and still writes for the paper.
His new book is "Our War: Days and Events in the Fight for the Union,"
an innovative human history of New Hampshire's experience in the Civil
War. A long-time friend, admirer and colleague of Donald Hall, Pride
offers the following recommended reading list for those just discovering
him:</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Poetry</b></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><ul>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
"Kicking the Leaves"</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
"The One Day"</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
"White Apples and the Taste of Stone: Collected Poems, 1946-2006"</span></span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Prose</b></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><ul>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
"Life Work"</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
"Their Ancient Glittering Eyes"</span></span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Memoir</b></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
"String Too Short to Be Saved"</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>A full Donald Hall bibliography can be found below.</i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><h3>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Honors</span></span></h3>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Along with serving as poet laureate to both New Hampshire and the
United States, Hall has received a number of honors but perhaps none
more prestigious than receiving the 2010 National Medal of Arts from
President Barack Obama during a ceremony at the White House in
Washington, DC, March 2, 2011. Below is the statement from the National
Endowment for the Arts:</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><h3>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Donald Hall – Poet</b></span></span></h3>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Donald Hall is an American poet who, through an illustrious career and
as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2006-2007, has worked to
improve poetry's standing in the United States and provide new
inspiration.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Hall has published numerous books of poetry, most recently "White
Apples and the Taste of Stone: Selected Poems 1946-2006" (2006), "The
Painted Bed" (2002) and "Without: Poems" (1998). Other notable
collections include "The One Day" (1988), which won the National Book
Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and a Pulitzer
Prize nomination; "The Happy Man" (1986), which won the Lenore Marshall
Poetry Prize; and "Exiles and Marriages" (1955), which was the Academy
of American Poet's Lamont Poetry Selection for 1956. In addition, Hall
has received two Guggenheim Fellowships and is a member of the American
Academy of Arts and Letters.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><table align="right" border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" style="height: 188px; width: 270px;">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><img alt="" src="http://www.nhmagazine.com/Jan13donaldwriting.jpg" style="height: 166px; width: 250px;" /></span></span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<div class="photo-description">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Constant writing and rewriting is the butter churn of creativity for Hall.</span></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<div class="photo-credit">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Photo by David Mendelsohn</span></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><h3>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
A Donald Hall Bibliography</span></span></h3>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Poetry</b></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><ul>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Fantasy Poets Number Four (1952)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Exiles and Marriages (1955)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
The Dark Houses (1958)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
A Hundred Thousand Straightened Nails (1961)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
A Roof of Tiger Lilies (1964)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
The Alligator Bride (1969)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
The Yellow Room: Love Poems (1971)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
The Town of Hill (1975)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
A Blue Wing Tilts at the Edge of the Sea: Selected Poems, 1964-1974 (1975)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Kicking the Leaves (1978)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
The Toy Bone (1979)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
The Happy Man (1986)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
The One Day (1988)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Old and New Poems (1990)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Here at Eagle Pond (1992)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
The Museum of Clear Ideas (1993)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
The Old Life (1996)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Without (1998)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Two by Two (2000, with Richard Wilbur)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
The Painted Bed (2002)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
White Apples and the Taste of Stone (2006)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
The Back Chamber (2011)</span></span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Biography</b></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><ul>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Henry Moore (1966)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Dock Ellis (1976)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Remembering Poets (1978)[a]</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
The Ancient Glittering Eyes (1992)[a]</span></span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Drama</b></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><ul>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
An Evening's Frost (1965)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Bread and Roses (1975)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Ragged Mountain Elegies (1983)</span></span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>For children</b></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><ul>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Andrew the Lion Farmer (1959)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Riddle Rat (1977)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Ox-Cart Man (1979)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
The Man Who Lived Alone (1984)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
I Am the Dog, I Am the Cat (1994)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Summer of 1944 (1994)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Lucy's Christmas (1994)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Lucy's Summer (1995)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Old Home Day (1996)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
When Willard Met Babe Ruth (1996)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
The Milkman's Boy (1997)</span></span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Short Stories</b></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><ul>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
The Ideal Bakery (1987)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Willow Temple (2003)</span></span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Memoirs</b></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><ul>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
String too Short to Be Saved (1961)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Seasons at Eagle Pond (1987)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Life Work (1993)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
The Best Day the Worst Day: Life with Jane Kenyon (2005)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Eagle Pond (2007)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Unpacking the Boxes: A Memoir of a Life in Poetry (2008)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Christmas at Eagle Pond (2012)</span></span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Text Books</b></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><ul>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
To Read Literature (1981)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Writing Well with Sven Birkerts (1994)</span></span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><div class="article-footer">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">This article appears in the <a href="http://www.nhmagazine.com/January-2013/">January 2013</a> issue of New Hampshire Magazine</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"> Did you like what you read here? <a href="https://www.nhmagazine.com/Subscribe/"> Subscribe to New Hampshire Magazine » </a></span></span><br />
</div>
</article>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5940942406394539471.post-70501208937055670372013-08-01T09:23:00.001-07:002013-08-01T09:23:44.240-07:00Enjoy Mr. Hall's Latest New Yorker Essay<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht96tGpNbLmm0SRRoBZKTif-6IWZTDMhfRmXwJDQ5wmZqhFWlMc5c_gVB0ov7T9Jx_FukRHkGl-cCnOYP05l8rjy8xYVcHr6Xuppu8P7yQ6JJTMUFeoLXz7SE3rTSuqItg-7zH1HP90w/s1600/NYER_3BEARDS_final-580.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht96tGpNbLmm0SRRoBZKTif-6IWZTDMhfRmXwJDQ5wmZqhFWlMc5c_gVB0ov7T9Jx_FukRHkGl-cCnOYP05l8rjy8xYVcHr6Xuppu8P7yQ6JJTMUFeoLXz7SE3rTSuqItg-7zH1HP90w/s320/NYER_3BEARDS_final-580.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>The New Yorker</i> online presents Donald Hall's latest essay, <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/06/three-beards.html" target="_blank">"Three Beards"</a> , a look back at how the state of his facial hair has been affected by the people and events in his life. </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5940942406394539471.post-13212021286617774422012-11-07T06:05:00.002-08:002012-11-07T06:08:16.046-08:00Latest New Yorker Offering: "Thank You, Thank You"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwx1RyCjo9MraGcN-dKStymNeykThrdALig7JChHp5Y-GPpVKAEhgD7DmNLmoNm3xjVU8kOND0B-IENRiansYb1hSNVsOY82XDT9drSd7YA8A3p8heihDWHdO5-MtGKEk5xHx3V242XA/s1600/NYER_HALL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwx1RyCjo9MraGcN-dKStymNeykThrdALig7JChHp5Y-GPpVKAEhgD7DmNLmoNm3xjVU8kOND0B-IENRiansYb1hSNVsOY82XDT9drSd7YA8A3p8heihDWHdO5-MtGKEk5xHx3V242XA/s200/NYER_HALL.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
Donald Hall's <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/10/thank-you-thank-you-donald-hall-on-a-lifetime-of-poetry-readings.html#entry-more">latest online article</a> for <i>The New Yorker</i> looks back at a lifetime of poetry readings. Enjoy!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5940942406394539471.post-709552331883646272012-06-19T06:45:00.000-07:002012-11-07T06:12:51.354-08:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIvOL_Bj5UOdSQKU94GMNgc8gHEsCcJ1GUUfOyrhB5hyphenhyphenEuK1YbhK03hz3YpbKHhN1E2PNdO8NGOwMpvQldtMZhfxyrLyoqHZiqJgXFSmJrzwA6CRFYS8bc2O9xMzT2IEbcCkYx8KRTUA/s1600/Publication1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIvOL_Bj5UOdSQKU94GMNgc8gHEsCcJ1GUUfOyrhB5hyphenhyphenEuK1YbhK03hz3YpbKHhN1E2PNdO8NGOwMpvQldtMZhfxyrLyoqHZiqJgXFSmJrzwA6CRFYS8bc2O9xMzT2IEbcCkYx8KRTUA/s320/Publication1.jpg" width="247" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
See and hear Mr. Hall in person at this year's Sunken Garden Poetry Festival on the grounds of the Hill-Stead Museum in Farmington, Wednesday, July 25 at 7:30 p.m. Other events of interest precede the reading. For more information including directions to the museum go to Hill-Stead's <a href="http://www.hillstead.org/">website</a> or call 860.677.4787. To learn more about the poetry events at the museum visit the Sunken Garden <a href="http://sunkengardenpoetry.org/">website</a> .</div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5940942406394539471.post-13822966143503143942012-05-26T19:50:00.003-07:002012-11-07T06:13:05.420-08:00<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6b4TVlE5jd7sLfyjg2bO510vQeu2EunStoSg8GigdSChpYAdKiznm3TKbTIooJuy06Bw3AQeBneSQLwpcL7io8McZsZA_K2966hzKu_LvF7felXat15R77p5LVHlEiaV-AY3tLuVDDg/s1600/image001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6b4TVlE5jd7sLfyjg2bO510vQeu2EunStoSg8GigdSChpYAdKiznm3TKbTIooJuy06Bw3AQeBneSQLwpcL7io8McZsZA_K2966hzKu_LvF7felXat15R77p5LVHlEiaV-AY3tLuVDDg/s320/image001.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Plaque mounted at Miller Memorial Library</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When Mr. Hall visited Hamden in September the walkway and seating area outside Miller Library was named in his honor by the Town. This month a plaque was erected officially designating the area the Donald Hall Terrace. </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5940942406394539471.post-23867130819200358362012-05-26T19:43:00.000-07:002012-11-07T06:13:19.817-08:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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New. Coming in November, 2012. <i>Christmas at Eagle Pond </i>by Donald Hall.<br />
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<i>From Amazon.com: </i>Donald Hall, drawing on his own childhood memories to create an instant-classic Christmas story, gives himself the thing he most wanted but didn’t get as a boy: a Christmas at Eagle Pond. It’s the Christmas season of 1940 and twelve-year-old Donnie takes the train to visit his grandparents. Once there, he quickly settles into the farm’s routines. In the barn, Gramp milks the cows and entertains his grandson by speaking rhymed pieces, while his grandson’s eyes are drawn to an empty stall that houses a graceful, cobwebby sleigh. Now, Model-As speed over the wintry roads, which must be ploughed, and the beautiful sleigh has become obsolete. When the church pageant is over, the gifts are exchanged, and the remains of the Christmas feast put away, the air becomes heavy with fine snowflakes—the kind that fall at the start of a big storm—and everyone wonders, how will Donnie get back to his parents on time?</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5940942406394539471.post-90043515829282282712012-05-26T19:32:00.000-07:002012-11-07T06:13:47.145-08:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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Read the library's new<a href="http://www.hamdenlibrary.org/hamdens_poet.pdf"> ebook</a>, <i>Hamden's Poet, </i>written for children about Donald Hall's Hamden origins and how he came to write the Caldecott Medal Award winning picture book, <i>The Ox Cart Man. </i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5940942406394539471.post-89722589561448627132012-04-03T14:41:00.000-07:002012-11-07T06:14:00.545-08:00New Donald Hall DVD Available<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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Mr. Hall has graciously donated a new DVD to our collection. The DVD was recorded on May 8, 2011 ath the First Congregational Church of Wilmot. Mr Hall reads from his poems and reminisces about life on his family's farm, Eagle Pond. The DVD was produced by the Wilmot New Hampshire Historical Society. It joins Citizen's TV's <i>Hamden Celebrates Donald Hall </i>and PBS's <i>Donald Hall and Jane Kenyon: A Life Together </i>in the non-fiction (800's) section of our DVD collection in the media room. Thank you, Mr. Hall.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5940942406394539471.post-70149140120848008902012-03-12T07:20:00.001-07:002012-11-07T06:15:20.482-08:00Mr. Hall's Essay Brings National Response<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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On January 23rd, <i>The New Yorker</i> magazine published Mr. Hall's latest essay entitled "Out the Window" describing winter days at his New Hampshire farmhouse and his views on aging. <br />
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(If you haven't read the essay, a <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/01/23/120123fa_fact_hall">summary</a> is available online and, of course, the print version of the magazine is available in the library.)</div>
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The <i>New Yorker </i>website also offers the added bonus of an <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/2012/01/23/120123on_audio_hall">audio file</a> of a telephone interview with Mr. Hall. </div>
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NPR soon picked up the thread. WHYY's Terry Gross <a href="http://www.npr.org/2012/02/08/146348759/donald-hall-a-poets-view-out-the-window">interviewed</a> him for her program, <i>Fresh Air. </i></div>
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"Out My Window" has also found its place in the blogosphere <i>. "</i>Intrepid Girl" <a href="http://intrepidpapergirl.com/2012/01/29/view-from-poet-donald-halls-window-on-ageism-writers-block-and-the-wonder-of-andro-gel/">shares </a>Gary Knight's recent photos of Mr. Hall at home in his ancestral farmhouse, surrounded by books and artwork. </div>
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Mr. Hall tells us he is still getting letters about the article everyday, including one from Tom Brokaw! He goes on to say that former Baseball Commissioner and fellow Hamden native Fay Vincent "Wrote a column about my essay, in a Florida newspaper, and somebody gave it to me, and I have found him. He grew up in Whitneyville, on Ralston? He caddied for my father at the New Haven Country Club!"</div>
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Mr Vincent's article appears below with permission from <i>The TC Palm.</i> </div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>Fay Vincent: Great words, writing open windows to lives, past and present</b></span></h1>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Aging Donald Hall sheds perspective on growing older, remembering past</span><span class="org fn"></span> <span class="fn"><br />
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<i><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="fn">Fay Vincent, former business executive and commissioner of Major League Baseball lives in Vero Beach.</span></span><span class="updated" title="2012-02-01T04:00:00-05:00"></span></i></h2>
This morning as I was having my swim, a set of buzzards showed up over head and slowly circled in the bright sunlight. I refuse to be intimidated by such obvious messages, but the grim birds reminded me of a lovely piece in the Jan. 23 New Yorker by the eminent poet Donald Hall.<br />
Hall, the former Poet Laureate, and I grew up in Hamden, Conn., a small suburb of New Haven, and I have read with pleasure and admiration much of his published oeuvre. He loves baseball and the Red Sox and has written many lyric essays about the joys of our great game.<br />
Now in his 80s, his recent essay is about the simple joys the world of nature brings to him as he sits in his armchair and gazes out the window at the winter birds and snow-covered farm yard in rural New Hampshire while recalling his younger days and family times at his old homestead.<br />
The essence of fine writing is to connect the written words to the subconscious of the reader. The Donald Hall essay, like a fine poem, suggests much more than it says. Isaac Stern once told me music is what takes place in between the notes. The same is true of fine writing.<br />
Hall inserts memories of his mother in her older years sitting at her window to watch children walking up the street to the same school he had "trudged" to some 75 years earlier. The repetition of the experiences older people enjoy as they sit by their windows is, of course, to occasion the poetic response.<br />
Many of us are sitting by windows of one sort or another. And many of us recall watching as our parents played out their older years much as we are now doing. I remember seeing my father sitting before his television set in summer afternoons watching meaningless baseball games. Now I do the same thing all summer long. He was perfectly content to enjoy the games because he needed so little to provide him with pleasure.<br />
As Donald Hall sits by his window in New England while the various winter birds cluster on his bird feeder, the simple dimension of the events before his aging eyes does not disappoint him. The poet and the wise man know there is joy in those simple pleasures. Think of Henry David Thoreau. The genius of Hall is his ability to write a few short pages in which his voice sings to us with the strength not of the old man but of the fine poet. He makes the specific into the universal.<br />
It is not the buzzards overhead but the simple pleasure of my mundane swim that is the link between me and the poet. As I swim I ponder how his writing ties me to him and his birds and the window through which he is gazing. Hall writes of his mother and the pleasure of looking out to watch young people walking by her house. Is that not what many of us do? We watch the young as the world turns.<br />
I look out on the world through the prism of books. The biography of George Kennan, the former U.S. diplomat, currently on my reading table is a window for me. Hall and his lovely essay triggered a response within me. Somewhere in that process is the essence of fine writing. My response in a sense completes his poetic effort.<br />
As a kid, I used to caddie for Hall's father at the New Haven Country Club. I liked the elder Hall and he was always gentle to me as I lugged his bag. Hall lived on what he once called "the poor side of Whitney Avenue" — the main thoroughfare bisecting the town. I also lived on that side. On the other side the houses were grander and the families more prominent.<br />
Hall and I have shared much, including baseball. His fine writing — and poetic views — help me appreciate the unfathomable depths of the world just beyond his and my windows. The buzzards circling me this morning reminded me of the ways in which Hall and I share the limits of growing older. Our windows remind us of times past and reward us with thin and cold but pleasant views.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5940942406394539471.post-16474988860764584682011-09-28T09:34:00.003-07:002011-09-28T11:43:44.875-07:00From Lois Stuber Spitzer<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">How special it is for you to celebrate Donald Hall's birthday. I wish I lived near enough to Hamden to attend some of the events. Our Mothers were friends at Bates College and corresponded for years. I have been in touch with Donald by letter and he has been able to answer. Among other things I told him that I had read " Ox cart Man" to my grandchildren ( Ages 5 and 8 ) very recently and they were pleased with the way that it really didn't end!!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Blogmaster's note: Thanks to Ms. Spitzer's recent generous donation, the Hamden Public Library has been able to purchase several of Mr. Hall's out-of-print books that were not previously in our collection. Thank you, Lois.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5940942406394539471.post-85700623626350972011-09-28T09:31:00.000-07:002011-09-28T09:31:27.403-07:00From Cynthia Warner Strickland HHS Class of '66I never knew Mr. Hall, but his name was spoken often in our home. My mother, always a voracious reader, was one of his most avid fans. We don't have many tangible items to contribute to your exhibit, in fact the only photographs (I include) of my mother, Jean (Lennon) Robinson Warner, HHS '43 and her life-long friend, Carolen Lewis Hurd, HHS '44, with Mr. Hall on a visit to Hamden, in April of 1994. Having followed his career from early on, she was excited to actually hear him read some of his poetry. In fact, I would say that day was one of Mother's most cherished memories. She was thrilled not only to have her photograph taken with him, but to have him autograph a copy of <i>Lucy's Summer </i>for her. She was particularly fond of his tales of simpler days spent on the farm. She married a farmer from Hamden, afterall!<br />
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In 1972, after her child rearing duties were complete, Jean decided to take a writing class at SCSU; she was very excited to discover her English Professor shared her enthusiasm for Mr. Hall's writing. He requested the class read <i>Writing Well. </i>When our daughter turned 2 years old, my mother presented her with a copy of <i>The Ox-Cart Man</i>, which quickly became one of her favorites to have "Gram" read aloud to her. And, of al the books she owned, it was <i>String Too Short to be Saved</i> that Mom wanted to re-read when she became ill in 2007. By then her granddaughter had grown and become a librarian and it was her turn to read aloud to "Gram". She chose the perfect title for their last visit together...<i>The Farm Summer. </i><br />
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I wish that Mom could be here in person to tell you how much she admired your work and to cheer you on. Happy Birthday, Mr. Hall and much success with <i>The Back Chamber. </i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5940942406394539471.post-57674627507927218702011-09-19T17:28:00.000-07:002011-09-19T17:29:31.042-07:00Jean Robinson Warner's Scrapbook<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbiS5L5DrtTl5RCErQth-yTCAFAWzJb-aX7O_Ji4QvCkYY_YDrYOwdIw3WWLoyqKATLLnBxegbak5GSzeONRiQSveiuEP7dWi5S0MhttLazgnaVX8RdngjTghKavP6EAxHW8wYHg2-xg/s1600/004.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbiS5L5DrtTl5RCErQth-yTCAFAWzJb-aX7O_Ji4QvCkYY_YDrYOwdIw3WWLoyqKATLLnBxegbak5GSzeONRiQSveiuEP7dWi5S0MhttLazgnaVX8RdngjTghKavP6EAxHW8wYHg2-xg/s400/004.jpg" style="clear: both; float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;" /></a> <br />
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<div style="clear: both; text-align: LEFT;"><a href="http://picasa.google.com/blogger/" target="ext"><img align="middle" alt="Posted by Picasa" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/pbp.gif" style="-moz-background-clip: initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: initial; -moz-background-origin: initial; background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 50%; border: 0px none; padding: 0px;" /></a></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5940942406394539471.post-42347083540006169402011-09-17T18:21:00.000-07:002011-12-05T14:08:32.747-08:00From Massachusetts Artist, Illustrator & Printmaker, Barry Moser<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: white; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Donald Hall</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: white;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="color: white; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">I’ve known Don Hall for a long time, and we have talked a lot. We have talked about the women in our lives. We have talked about our students and good teaching. We have talked about our mutually held passion for a disciplined work ethic. We have talked about poetry and art. But we never talked about baseball since I am ignorant of all such things. We broke bread together. Lots of times. And we lifted more than a few glasses together—from good iced tea to good whiskey.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="color: white;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I could tell a story about Don that happened few years ago when we were on deck together at a literary conference at Calvin College in Grand Rapids Michigan. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: white; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">It was the end of the day. Both of us were tired. Anne Lamott was the keynote speaker at the big opening event that night, but neither of us were particularly interested in going. So we repaired to our splendid accommodations at the local Holiday Inn and took up immediate, though temporary residence at the bar. We talked a long time, about this and that, mostly trying to avoid the subject of his grieving heart and addressing lighter matters. The whiskey helped. I don’t remember much of the conversation today, nor do I remember leaving the bar that night. The next morning Don and I were to be on stage together—to talk about what to an audience I do not recall. I was already on stage and seated when Donald arrived a few minutes late. He was walking with a limp and a cane. Appears that he took a header when he was taking off his trousers last night. It was all my fault….</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: white; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">(reader: take a long pause here…)</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: white;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: white;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: white; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">oh…I said I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u style="text-underline: thick;">could</u></i> tell that story, didn’t I?, and that implies that I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u style="text-underline: thick;">wouldn’t,</u> </i>doesn’t it? </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: white; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">So I won’t.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="color: white;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I’ll tell another one instead.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: white;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: white; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-text-raise: 5.0pt; position: relative; top: -5pt;">In August of 1998 I was three years into my work on the Pennyroyal Caxton Bible, a five-year long project in which I cast a few of my friends as characters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some of them you might know: Leonard Baskin, the sculptor, was Moses, though he allowed that he would be more comfortable being cast as God. Paul Mariani, the poet and biographer, was Apollos. Athol Fugard, the South African playwright, was Job. And so on. I asked Don if he would be my Ecclesiastes, the preacher, and he agreed. I thought it was an especially good idea given that the poetry in Ecclesiastes’ eponymous book is, in my modest opinion, some of the most beautiful in the King James Bible. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: white; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-text-raise: 5.0pt; position: relative; top: -5pt;">So, in the late, sunny morning of August 20th, my assistant and I drove the two hours from my house to his in Danbury, New Hampshire to visit and photograph Don for his appearance in the Bible. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: white; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-text-raise: 5.0pt; position: relative; top: -5pt;">Cara made a few shots as Don and I caught up with each other and shot the breeze about poetry, the Bible, Henry Moore, and Dylan Thomas. Cara asked if she could make a few pictures of Don in his study, to which he was amenable. Half an hour later we went outside to make the studies I needed to make in natural daylight. The sun was high in the western sky and the shadows on his face and beard were crisp and clean—just what I was looking for. We brought a red fold-up chair from the house and set it up in the front yard under an ancient tree, taking care to stay out of its shadow. Don sat down and we positioned him to get the light on his face just right. Cara snapped a few shots but then discovered that she did not have film in her medium format camera. Don sat patiently while she switched over to the smaller camera she brought along as a back-up. During all this none of us noticed, not even Donald, that the back two legs of the red folding chair were sinking slowly into the soft turf under the tree. Cara and I watched as Don and the chair sank backwards in an accelerating slow motion. And then…plop... he spilled out of the chair and onto the damp grass. He was no worse for the wear and we all had a good laugh as I helped him to his feet. A few grass stains on his elbows and knees was the sum of his injuries. Nevertheless, we did not press him to re-take the shot. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: white; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-text-raise: 5.0pt; position: relative; top: -5pt;">It was a short visit—less than an hour all tolled. Donald looked good—his hair was long and shaggy which was absolutely perfect for my purposes. He said, jokingly, that he had been letting it grow—just for me. Later though he said that Jane had always been his barber and without her, he just doesn’t get it cut any more. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: white; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-text-raise: 5.0pt; position: relative; top: -5pt;">It might have been one of the things we talked about that night in Grand Rapids.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="color: white; mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0