Donald Hall
Encyclopedia
Donald Hall is an American poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress
Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress
The Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress—commonly referred to as the United States Poet Laureate—serves as the nation's official poet. During his or her term, the Poet Laureate seeks to raise the national consciousness to a greater appreciation of the reading and writing of...

 (commonly known as the Poet Laureate of the United States) in 2006.

Personal life

Hall was born in Hamden, Connecticut
Hamden, Connecticut
Hamden is a town in New Haven County, Connecticut, United States. The town's nickname is "The Land of the Sleeping Giant." Hamden is home to Quinnipiac University. The population was 58,180 according to the Census Bureau's 2005 estimates...

, the only child of Donald Andrew Hall, a businessman, and Lucy Wells. He was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy
Phillips Exeter Academy
Phillips Exeter Academy is a private secondary school located in Exeter, New Hampshire, in the United States.Exeter is noted for its application of Harkness education, a system based on a conference format of teacher and student interaction, similar to the Socratic method of learning through asking...

, then earned a bachelor's degree from Harvard in 1951 and a B.Litt, from Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...

 in 1953. Hall received an honorary PhD, Lit. from Bates College
Bates College
Bates College is a highly selective, private liberal arts college located in Lewiston, Maine, in the United States. and was most recently ranked 21st in the nation in the 2011 US News Best Liberal Arts Colleges rankings. The college was founded in 1855 by abolitionists...

 in 1991.

Hall began writing even before reaching his teens, beginning with poems and short stories, and then moving on to novels and dramatic verse. Hall continued to write throughout his prep school years at Exeter, and, while still only sixteen years old, attended the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference
Bread Loaf Writers' Conference
The Bread Loaf Writers' Conference is a writers' conference held every summer at the Bread Loaf Inn, near Bread Loaf Mountain, east of Middlebury, Vermont...

, where he made his first acquaintance with the poet Robert Frost
Robert Frost
Robert Lee Frost was an American poet. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and...

. That same year, he published his first work. While an undergraduate at Harvard, Hall served on the editorial board of The Harvard Advocate
The Harvard Advocate
The Harvard Advocate, the literary magazine of Harvard College, is the oldest continuously published college literary magazine in the United States. The magazine was founded by Charles S. Gage and William G. Peckham in 1866 and, except for a hiatus during the last years of World War II, has...

, and got to know a number of people who, like him, were poised with significant ambitions in the literary world, amongst them John Ashbery
John Ashbery
John Lawrence Ashbery is an American poet. He has published more than twenty volumes of poetry and won nearly every major American award for poetry, including a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for his collection Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. But Ashbery's work still proves controversial...

, Robert Bly
Robert Bly
Robert Bly is an American poet, author, activist and leader of the Mythopoetic Men's Movement.-Life:Bly was born in Lac qui Parle County, Minnesota, to Jacob and Alice Bly, who were of Norwegian ancestry. Following graduation from high school in 1944, he enlisted in the United States Navy, serving...

, Kenneth Koch
Kenneth Koch
Kenneth Koch was an American poet, playwright, and professor, active from the 1950s until his death at age 77...

, Frank O'Hara
Frank O'Hara
Francis Russell "Frank" O'Hara was an American writer, poet and art critic. He was a member of the New York School of poetry.-Life:...

, and Adrienne Rich
Adrienne Rich
Adrienne Cecile Rich is an American poet, essayist and feminist. She has been called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century."-Early life:...

. In 1968, he signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War. During his senior year, he won the Glascock Prize
Glascock Prize
The Glascock Poetry Prize is awarded to the winner of the annual Kathryn Irene Glascock Intercollegiate Poetry Contest at Mount Holyoke College...

 that Koch had won 3 years earlier.

After leaving Harvard, Hall went to Oxford for two years, to study for the B.Litt. He was editor of the magazine Oxford Poetry
Oxford Poetry
Oxford Poetry is a literary magazine based in Oxford, England. It is currently edited by Hamid Khanbhai and Thomas A Richards.Founded in 1910 by Basil Blackwell, its editors have included Dorothy L...

, as literary editor of Isis, as editor of New Poems, and as poetry editor of The Paris Review. At the end of his first Oxford year, Hall also won the university's Newdigate Prize
Newdigate prize
Sir Roger Newdigate's Prize is awarded to students of the University of Oxford for Best Composition in English verse by an undergraduate who has been admitted to Oxford within the previous four years. It was founded by Sir Roger Newdigate, Bt in the 18th century...

, awarded for his long poem, 'Exile'.

On returning to the United States, Hall went to Stanford, where he spent one year as a Creative Writing Fellow, studying under the poet-critic, Yvor Winters
Yvor Winters
Arthur Yvor Winters was an American poet and literary critic.-As modernist:Winters's early poetry, which appeared in small avant-garde magazines alongside work by writers like James Joyce and Gertrude Stein, was written in the modernist idiom, and was heavily influenced both by Native American...

. Following his year at Stanford, Hall went back to Harvard, where he spent three years in the Society of Fellows. During that time, he put together his first book, Exiles and Marriages, and with Robert Pack and Louis Simpson
Louis Simpson
Louis Aston Marantz Simpson is an American poet. He won the 1964 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his work At The End Of The Open Road.-Life:...

 edited an anthology which was to make a significant impression on both sides of the Atlantic, The New Poets of England and America. While teaching at the University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...

 in Ann Arbor, Michigan
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Ann Arbor is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the county seat of Washtenaw County. The 2010 census places the population at 113,934, making it the sixth largest city in Michigan. The Ann Arbor Metropolitan Statistical Area had a population of 344,791 as of 2010...

 he met poet Jane Kenyon
Jane Kenyon
Jane Kenyon was an American poet and translator. Her work is often characterized as simple, spare, and emotionally resonant.-Life:...

, whom he married in 1972. Three years after they were wed, they moved to Eagle Pond Farm, his grandparents' former home in Wilmot, New Hampshire
Wilmot, New Hampshire
Wilmot is a town in Merrimack County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 1,358 at the 2010 census. Wilmot is home to Winslow State Park and a small part of Gile State Forest.-History:...

. Hall and Kenyon were profiled at their home in a 1993 PBS documentary, "A Life Together," which aired as an episode of "The Bill Moyers Journal."

In 1989, when Hall was in his early sixties, it was discovered that he had colon cancer. Surgery followed, but by 1992 the cancer had metastasized to his liver. After another operation, and chemotherapy, he went into remission, though he was told that he only had a one-in-three chance of surviving the next five years. Then, early in 1994, it was discovered that Kenyon had leukemia. Her illness, her death fifteen months later, and Hall's struggle to come to terms with these things, were the subject of his 1998 book, Without. Another book of poems dedicated to Kenyon, Painted Bed, is cited by Publishers Weekly as "more controlled, more varied and more powerful, this taut follow-up volume reexamines Hall's grief while exploring the life he has made since. The book's first poem, 'Kill the Day,' stands among the best Hall has ever written. It examines mourning in 16 long-lined stanzas, alternating catalogue with aphorism, understatement with keened lament: 'How many times will he die in his own lifetime?' "

Hall served as a member of the editorial board for poetry at the Wesleyan University Press
Wesleyan University Press
Wesleyan University Press is a university press that is part of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. The Press is currently directed by Suzanna Tamminen, a published poet and essayist...

 from 1958 to 1964. He has been closely affiliated with the Bennington College's
Bennington College
Bennington College is a liberal arts college located in Bennington, Vermont, USA. The college was founded in 1932 as a women's college and became co-educational in 1969.-History:-Early years:...

 graduate writing program since 1994, giving lectures and readings annually.

Career

To date, Hall has published fifteen books of poetry, most recently White Apples and the Taste of Stone (2006), The Painted Bed (2002) and Without: Poems (1998), which was published on the third anniversary of Jane Kenyon
Jane Kenyon
Jane Kenyon was an American poet and translator. Her work is often characterized as simple, spare, and emotionally resonant.-Life:...

's death. Most of the poems in Without deal with Kenyon's illness and death, and many are epistolary poem
Epistolary poem
An epistolary poem, also called a verse letter or letter poem, is a poem in the form of an epistle or letter.-History:Epistolary poems date at least as early as the Roman poet Ovid , who wrote the Heroides or Epistulae Heroidum , a collection of fifteen epistolary poems presented as though written...

s. In addition to poetry, he has also written several collections of essays (among them Life Work and String Too Short to be Saved), children's books (notably Ox-Cart Man
Ox-Cart Man
Ox-Cart Man is the title of a 1979 book written by Donald Hall and illustrated by Barbara Cooney. It won the 1980 Caldecott Medal. The book deals with an 18th century farming family that uses an ox-cart to take their goods to market, where they make the money to buy the things they need.Ox-Cart Man...

, which won the Caldecott Medal
Caldecott Medal
The Caldecott Medal is awarded annually by the Association for Library Service to Children , a division of the American Library Association, to the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children published that year. The award was named in honor of nineteenth-century English...

), and a number of plays. His recurring themes include New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...

 rural living, baseball
Baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...

, and how work conveys meaning to ordinary life. He is regarded as a master both of received forms and free verse
Free verse
Free verse is a form of poetry that refrains from consistent meter patterns, rhyme, or any other musical pattern.Poets have explained that free verse, despite its freedom, is not free. Free Verse displays some elements of form...

, and a champion of the art of revision, for whom writing is a craft, not merely a mode of self-expression. Hall has won many awards, including two Guggenheim Fellowships and a Robert Frost
Robert Frost
Robert Lee Frost was an American poet. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and...

 Medal, and has served as poet laureate
Poet Laureate
A poet laureate is a poet officially appointed by a government and is often expected to compose poems for state occasions and other government events...

 of his state. He continues to live and work at Eagle Pond Farm.

When not working on poems, he has turned his hand to reviews, criticism, textbooks, sports journalism, memoirs, biographies, children's stories, and plays. He has also devoted a lot of time to editing: between 1983 and 1996 he oversaw publication of more than sixty titles for the University of Michigan Press alone. He was for five years Poet Laureate
Poet Laureate
A poet laureate is a poet officially appointed by a government and is often expected to compose poems for state occasions and other government events...

 of his home state, New Hampshire
New Hampshire
New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...

 (1984–89), and can list among the many other honours and awards to have come his way: the Lamont Poetry Prize for Exiles and Marriages (1955), the Edna St Vincent Millay Award (1956), two Guggenheim Fellowships (1963–64, 1972–73), inclusion on the Horn Book Honour List (1986), the Sarah Josepha Hale Award (1983), the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize (1987), the National Book Critics Circle Award
National Book Critics Circle Award
The National Book Critics Circle Award is an annual award given by the National Book Critics Circle to promote the finest books and reviews published in English....

 for Poetry (1988), the NBCC Award (1989), the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....

 Book Prize in poetry (1989), and the Frost Medal
Frost Medal
The Robert Frost Medal is an award of the Poetry Society of America for "distinguished lifetime service to American poetry." Medalists receive a prize purse of $2,500....

 (1990). He has been nominated for the National Book Award
National Book Award
The National Book Awards are a set of American literary awards. Started in 1950, the Awards are presented annually to American authors for literature published in the current year. In 1989 the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization which now oversees and manages the National Book...

 on three separate occasions (1956, 1979 and 1993). In 1994, he received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize
Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize
The Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize is awarded annually by The Poetry Foundation; the Foundation also publishes Poetry. The Prize was established in 1986 by Ruth Lilly. The prize honors a living U.S. poet whose "lifetime accomplishments warrant extraordinary recognition"; its value is presently $100,000...

 for his lifetime achievement.

Hall was named the fourteenth U.S. Poet Laureate
Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress
The Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress—commonly referred to as the United States Poet Laureate—serves as the nation's official poet. During his or her term, the Poet Laureate seeks to raise the national consciousness to a greater appreciation of the reading and writing of...

, succeeding Ted Kooser
Ted Kooser
Ted Kooser is an American poet. He served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004 to 2006.-Early Life:...

. He served from 1 October 2006, and was succeeded by Charles Simic
Charles Simic
Dušan "Charles" Simić is a Serbian-American poet, and was co-Poetry Editor of the Paris Review. He was appointed the fifteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 2007.-Early years:...

 the following year. At the time of his appointment, Hall was profiled in an Oct. 16, 2006 episode of The News Hour with Jim Lehrer. Hall was awarded the 2010 National Medal of Arts
National Medal of Arts
The National Medal of Arts is an award and title created by the United States Congress in 1984, for the purpose of honoring artists and patrons of the arts. It is the highest honor conferred to an individual artist on behalf of the people. Honorees are selected by the National Endowment for the...

 by President Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...

.

Donald Hall currently resides in Wilmot, New Hampshire
Wilmot, New Hampshire
Wilmot is a town in Merrimack County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 1,358 at the 2010 census. Wilmot is home to Winslow State Park and a small part of Gile State Forest.-History:...

, a small town in Merrimack County in the vicinity of fellow poet and author Maxine Kumin
Maxine Kumin
Maxine Kumin is an American poet and author. She was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1981-1982.-Early years:...

.

Poetry

  • Fantasy Poets Number Four (1952)
  • Exiles and Marriages (1955)
  • The Dark Houses (1958)
  • A Hundred Thousand Straightened Nails (1961)
  • A Roof of Tiger Lilies (1964)
  • The Alligator Bride (1969)
  • The Yellow Room: Love Poems (1971)
  • The Town of Hill (1975)
  • A Blue Wing Tilts at the Edge of the Sea: Selected Poems, 1964-1974 (1975)
  • Kicking the Leaves (1978)
  • The Toy Bone (1979)
  • The Happy Man (1986)
  • The One Day (1988)
  • Old and New Poems (1990)
  • Here at Eagle Pond (1992)
  • The Museum of Clear Ideas (1993)
  • The Old Life (1996)
  • Without (1998)
  • Two by Two (2000, with Richard Wilbur)
  • The Painted Bed (2002)
  • White Apples and the Taste of Stone (2006)
  • The Back Chamber (2011)

Drama

  • An Evening's Frost (1965)
  • Bread and Roses (1975)
  • Ragged Mountain Elegies (1983)

For children

  • Andrew the Lion Farmer (1959)
  • Riddle Rat (1977)
  • Ox-Cart Man
    Ox-Cart Man
    Ox-Cart Man is the title of a 1979 book written by Donald Hall and illustrated by Barbara Cooney. It won the 1980 Caldecott Medal. The book deals with an 18th century farming family that uses an ox-cart to take their goods to market, where they make the money to buy the things they need.Ox-Cart Man...

    (1979)
  • The Man Who Lived Alone (1984)
  • I Am the Dog, I Am the Cat (1994)
  • Summer of 1944 (1994)
  • Lucy's Christmas (1994)
  • Lucy's Summer (1995)
  • Old Home Day (1996)
  • When Willard Met Babe Ruth (1996)
  • The Milkman's Boy (1997)

Memoirs

  • String too Short to Be Saved (1961)
  • The Best Day the Worst Day: Life with Jane Kenyon (2005)
  • Unpacking the Boxes: A Memoir of a Life in Poetry (2008)


External links

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