Best Selling Books by Donald Hall

The prize-winning poet’s collection of autobiographical poems is “the work of a master, all the more poignant for its frankness . . . in the face of tragedy” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette). One of America’s most celebrated poets, Donald Hall was at the height of his powers when he wrote The Old Life. Intimate, anecdotal and often funny, these autobiographical poems follow Hall from his boyhood to his developing acquaintance with fellow poets—including seniors like Robert Frost and contemporaries like Robert Bly. They chronicle Hall’s growing into manhood, fatherhood, grandfatherhood, and a happy second marriage. In the final poem, “Without,” Hall laments the illness of his late wife, Jane Kenyon. “These autobiographical poems are free of self-pity, engagingly frank without being in any sense ‘confessional,’ and often wildly comical . . . All are first-rate.” —Minneapolis Star-Tribune

If we believe that the most engaging people have eclectic interests, then Donald Hall is incontrovertibly our most engaging man of letters. Prize-winning poet, teacher, essayist, children''s book writer, Hall here reflects on some of the things he holds most dear: his family home at New Hampshire''s Eagle Pond, baseball, poetry, artists and writers named Henry (Moore, Adams, and James), trees, politics, graveyards, basketball, and reading out loud. Collected here for the first time are Hall''s reminiscences of time spent with the sculptor Henry Moore, appreciations of his sports heroes such as Bob Cousy, Red Auerbach, Carlton Fisk, and his insightful and inspiring readings of fellow poets, E. A. Robinson, Andrew Marvell, James Wright, and others. This undeniably eclectic mix is a celebration and catalog of a writer''s subjects. In Hall''s words, "The title should please not only for its prodigious procession of p''s but for bringing back memories of rote recitation standing in the third grade doing the multiplication tables, 7''s maybe, or maybe the principal products of Portugal." Hall''s dedication to the written word will be familiar to readers of his poetry and his autobiographical essay Life Work, a "sustained meditation on work as the key to personal happiness," according to the Los Angeles Times. Principal Products of Portugal gives Hall''s readers a fresh perspective on familiar subjects as well as a deeper appreciation for the making of a reader, writer, and poet.

Winner of the Caldecott Medal Thus begins a lyrical journey through the days and weeks, the months, and the changing seasons in the life of one New Englander and his family. The oxcart man packs his goods - the wool from his sheep, the shawl his wife made, the mittens his daughter knitted, and the linen they wove. He packs the birch brooms his son carved, and even a bag of goose feathers from the barnyard geese. He travels over hills, through valleys, by streams, past farms and villages. At Portsmouth Market he sells his goods, one by one - even his beloved ox. Then, with his pockets full of coins, he wanders through the market, buying provisions for his family, and returns to his home. And the cycle begins again. "Like a pastoral symphony translated into picture book format, the stunning combination of text and illustrations recreates the mood of 19-century rural New England."—The Horn Book

The former U.S. poet laureate presents the essential work from across his long and celebrated career in this sweeping collection. For decades, Donald Hall produced a body of work that established him as one of America’s most significant—and beloved—poets of his generation. Celebrated for his plainspoken yet evocative imagery and his stirring explorations of bucolic life, Hall won numerous awards, including the Robert Frost Medal, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, and the National Medal of Arts. When Hall reached his eighties, his health began to decline, and he announced that the ability to write poems has “abandoned” him. Looking back over his astonishingly rich body of work, Hall hand-picked his finest and most memorable poems for this final, concise, and essential volume.

A former poet laureate presents a new collection of essays delivering an unexpected view from the vantage point of very old age.

Gathers poems from each period of Hall''s career, including "The One Day," the long poem that won the National Book Critics Circle Award.

A collection of stories by the former US poet laureate, “a first-rate work by an author whose control over the tools of his genre is impeccable” (Publishers Weekly). A contemplative selection of twelve short stories from the celebrated author Donald Hall, Willow Temple focuses on the effects of divorce, adultery, and neglect. Hall’s stories are reminiscent of those of Alice Munro and William Maxwell in their mastery of form and their ability to trace the emotional fault lines connecting generations. “From Willow Temple” is the indelible story of a child’s witness of her mother’s adultery and the loss that underlies it. Three stories present David Bardo at crucial junctures of his life, beginning as a child drawn to his parents’ “cozy adult coven of drunks” and growing into a young man whose intense first affair undergirds a lifelong taste for ardor and betrayal. In this superbly perceptive collection, Hall gives memorable accounts of the passionate weight of lives. “[Hall possesses] a consistent gift for delicate description.” —The New York Times Book Review “Hall is comfortable with small stages—a tavern, a summer music camp, a farm, an artist’s studio, a junior college classroom, a cemetery, a bakery. But the quiet dramas that boil up in such places . . . are never small.” —Chicago Tribune “Understated lyricism very much in what William Carlos Williams (whom Hall often resembles) called the ‘American grain.’ Moving and memorable.” —Kirkus Reviews “A writer who attains the same high level of the game in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.” —The Boston Globe “[Willow Temple] attests to Hall’s mastery as a storyteller, the prose lyrical and elegiac as he moving unfolds each character’s frailties.” —Ploughshares

Hall''s bestselling collection ever speaks of the death of his wife--his gift and testimony, his lament, and his celebration of loss and love.

Spanning the entire career of the celebrated American poet, a collection of 226 works represents sixty years of poetic endeavor, including recent poems and a CD containing readings by the author.

In these tender essays, Hall shares his memories and thoughts on growing up in New Hampshire on his grandparent''s dairy farm, of the seasons, and of his connection to the land, his family, and his coming home.

The first full-length volume of poems in a decade by the former poet laureate of the United States In The Back Chamber, Donald Hall illuminates the evocative, iconic objects of deep memory—a cowbell, a white stone perfectly round, a three-legged milking stool—that serve to foreground the rich meditations on time and mortality that run through his remarkable new collection. While Hall’s devoted readers will recognize many of his long-standing preoccupations—baseball, the family farm, love, sex, and friendship—what will strike them as new is the fierce, pitiless poignancy he reveals as his own life’s end comes into view. The Back Chamber is far from being death-haunted, but rather is lively, irreverent, erotic, hilarious, ironic, and sly—full of the life-affirming energy that has made Donald Hall one of America’s most popular and enduring poets.

The revered American Poet Laureate reflects on the meaning of work, solitude, and love with “extraordinary nobility and wisdom” (The New York Times) When Donald Hall moved to his grandparents’ New Hampshire farm in 1975, his work as a writer and a life devoted to the literary arts must have seemed remote from the harsh physical labor of his ancestors. However, he reveals a similar kind of artistry in the lives of his grandparents, Kate and Wesley. From them, he learned that the devotion to craft—be it canning vegetables, writing poems, or carting manure—creates its own special discipline and an ‘absorbedness’ that no wage can compensate. In this “sustained meditation on work as the key to personal happiness” (Los Angeles Times), we see how the writer has modeled his own life on his family’s lives of work, solitude, and love. When Hall comes face to face with his own mortality halfway through writing this book, we understand both his obsession with work and its ultimate consolation.

The former US poet laureate delivers a book “filled with raw sexual disclosures, rowdy anger and a self-blasting mockery” (The New York Times). Donald Hall’s fourteenth collection opens with an epigraph from the Urdu poet Faiz: “The true subject of poetry is the loss of the beloved.” In that poetic tradition, as in The Painted Bed, the beloved might be a person or something else—life itself, or the disappearing countryside. Hall’s new poems further the themes of love, death, and mourning so powerfully introduced in his Without (1998), but from the distance of passed time. A long poem, “Daylilies on the Hill 1975-1989,” moves back to the happy repossession of the poet’s old family house and its history—a structure that “persisted against assaults” as its generations of residents could not. These poems are by turns furious and resigned, spirited and despairing—”mania is melancholy reversed,” as Hall writes in another long poem, “Kill the Day.” In this book’s fourth and final section, “Ardor,” the poet moves toward acceptance of new life in old age; eros reemerges. “More controlled, more varied and more powerful, this taut follow-up volume [to Without] 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.” —Publishers Weekly “A compelling, sometimes shocking, and certainly deeply moving depiction of bereavement.” —Poetry “Hall has continued growing as a poet, and his steady readers may consider this his finest collection . . . Bleakness and beauty characterize the reminiscent lyrics that follow, too, joined by a breathtaking bluntness.” —Booklist

Former United States poet laureate Donald Hall reflects on his life, discussing his childhood in Connecticut, the works that influenced him, his education, his success and failures as a writer and father, his friendships, and other related topics.

“With The One Day, this is his best work, a modest, skeptical, and brave poetry that embodies something essential about this late American century.” —Harvard Review This is Donald Hall’s most advanced work, extending his poetic reach even beyond his recent volumes. Conflict dominates this book, and conflict unites it. Hall takes poetry as an instrument for revelation, whether in an elegy for a (fictional) contemporary poet, or in the title series of poems, whose form imitates the first book of the Odes of Horace. The book’s final section, “Extra Innings,” moves with poignancy to questions about the end of the game. “A stunning volume of testamentary verse . . . an often perfect American blend of rue and buoyancy, narrative verve and grace.” —The New Yorker “Donald Hall is our finest elegist. The Museum of Clear Ideas is as original, idiosyncratic, and un-museumlike a poetic work as we are likely to see for a long time to come.” —Richard Tillinghast, The New Criterion “Hall’s poems make ‘durable relics’ of late twentieth-century life in much the same way that Byron’s Don Juan does for the early nineteenth. The ‘clear ideas,’ however, are timeless.” —Beloit Poetry Journal “These are some of the darkest lines Donald Hall has ever composed. They move through aching poignancy through illness diagnosed, sorrow, and poignant revelation, yet the final chord is not one of despair.” —Robert Taylor, Boston Globe “A collection of powerful new poems . . . Hall’s voice is more mature and classically spare than ever, offering revelatory glimpses of wisdom.” —Publishers Weekly “A brilliantly inventive tour de force . . . A significant and engaging book.” —Library Journal

A man who had been unhappy as a child finds after he has grown up that he is happy living alone in his cabin in the New England woods.

This is a collection of stories diverse in subject, but sutured together by the limitless affection the author holds for the land and the people of New England. Donald Hall tells about life on a small farm where, as a boy, he spent summers with his grandparents. Gradually the boy grows to be a young man, sees his grandparents aging, the farm become marginal, and finally, the cows sold and the barn abandoned. But these are more than nostalgic memories, for in the measured and tender prose of each episode are signs of the end of things - a childhood, perhaps a culture. In an Epilogue written for this edition, Donald Hall describes his return to the farm twenty-five years later, to live the rest of his life in the house of string. We take pleasure in bringing back into print this classic account of boyhood summers in old New England, with the addition of an Epilogue and an album of family snapshots.

Tells the story of the Graves Family Dairy, whose three horses pulled the wagons delivering milk to families in the years before trucks and shopping centers replaced them.

The essays in Fathers Playing Catch with Sons are a wonderful mixture of reminiscence and observation, of baseball and of fathers and sons, of how a game binds people together and bridges generations. In the pantheon of great sports literature, not a few poets have tried their hand at paying tribute to their love affair with the game--Walt Whitman, Marianne Moore, and William Carlos Williams among them. This elegant volume collects Donald Hall''s prose about sports, concentrating on baseball but extending to basketball, football and Ping-Pong.

Co-authored by two esteemed writers, "Writing Well," is a beautifully-written and thoroughly readable guide to the craft of writing prose. This concise, lively text covers all aspects of writing but is best known for its signature chapters on words, sentences, and paragraphs. Going beyond the basics of composition, the text teaches originality and elegance in writing encouraging students to develop their own written voice. Sample student papers including several works-in-progress - allow students to learn the writing process through the work of their peers. A brief handbook section rounds out the coverage.

In a long poem, the narrator looks back on his childhood and shares his attitudes toward the past

A master of American letters collects forty years of writings on poetry in one essential volume

From the Publisher: Donald Hall''s celebrated book of poems Without was written for his wife, Jane Kenyon, who died in 1995. Hall returns to this powerful territory in The Best Day the Worst Day, a work of prose that is equally "a work of art, love, and generous genius" (Liz Rosenberg, Boston Globe). Jane Kenyon was nineteen years younger than Donald Hall and a student poet at the University of Michigan when they met. Hall was her teacher. The Best Day the Worst Day is an intimate account of their twenty-three-year marriage; nearly all of it spent in New Hampshire at Eagle Pond Farm-of their shared rituals of writing, close attention to pets and gardening, and love in the afternoon. Hall joyfully records Jane''s growing power as a poet and the couple''s careful accommodations toward each other as writers. This portrait of the inner moods of "the best marriage I know about," as Hall has written, is laid against the stark medical emergency of Jane''s leukemia, which ended her life in fifteen months. Hall shares with readers-as if we were one of the grieving neighbors, friends, and relatives-the daily ordeal of Jane''s dying, through heartbreaking and generous storytelling. The Best Day the Worst Day stands alongside Elegy to Iris as a powerful testimony to both loss and love.

A compelling collection of essays on the state of contemporary poetry

Distinguished poet Donald Hall and award-winning artist Barry Moser have teamed up to create a hilarious, affectionate portrait in contrasts of our companions, and often best friends, a cat and a dog. With evocative words and masterful paintings, they delineate the doginess and catlike qualities that everyone will recognize.

A collection of essays by contemporary American poets on the subject of their art

From 1983 to 1998, poets Donald Hall and Jane Kenyon sent out a letterpress broadside poem each Christmas, printed by William Ewert of Concord New Hampshire. They were illustrated by Mary Azarian and Barry Moser, with calligraphy by R.P. Hale. In 1999, Wings Press collected these broadside poems and published them in a limited edition chapbook printed on linen paper. The cover stock--handmade by Austin, Texas, papermaker Kristin Kavanagh--incorporated red maple leaves from Eagle Pond, gathered by Donald Hall''s grandchildren on an autumn day in 1997. The cover was printed by Dr. Paul Christensen of College Station, Texas, using a 12x18 Chandler & Price sheet-fed letterpress; illustrations include wood cuts by Barry Moser and leaf prints made from leaves collected at Eagle Pond. Three hundred copies of Winter Poems from Eagle Pond were numbered, signed, and dated by the author. The book was designed and hand sewn by Wings Press publisher, Bryce Milligan, a long-time friend and correspondent of Hall''s. This is truly the perfect Christmas gift for any serious lover of poetry.

A spirited defense of the vitality of contemporary poetry.

One of America''s finest poets joins forces with one of baseball''s most outrageous pitchers to paint a revealing portrait of our national game. Donald Hall''s forceful, yet elegant, prose brings together all the elements of Dock Ellis''s story into a seamless whole. The two of them, the pitcher and the poet, give us remarkable insight into the customs and culture of this closed clannish world. Dock''s keen vision, filtered through Hall''s extraordinary voice, shows us the hardships and problems of the thinking athlete in an unthinking world.