Hall, Donald

▪ 2007

      Of the two major milestones for Donald Hall in 2006, only one was planned by him: the publication of White Apples and the Taste of Stone, a collection of his selected poetry. This lengthy volume—226 poems accompanied by a CD with Hall's readings of his own work—featured poetry written between 1946 and 2006. The unexpected accolade was Hall's being named U.S. poet laureate, a position, he told Newsweek, for which he had not even realized he was being considered.

      Donald Andrew Hall, Jr., was born on Sept. 20, 1928, in New Haven, Conn. He received a B.A. (1951) from Harvard University and attended the University of Oxford, where he won his first major poetry prize in 1952 and earned a second bachelor's degree in 1953. After spending a year at Stanford University, he returned to Harvard and oversaw the publication of Exiles and Marriages (1955), a collection of poems rigorously formal in style and structure. In 1957 he began teaching in the English department at the University of Michigan. During nearly two decades there, he published a number of poetry collections, including A Roof of Tiger Lilies (1964) and The Alligator Bride (1968), that increasingly moved away from his formal early work and toward the plainspoken, anecdotal poetry for which he later became best known. He also wrote prose works on a range of subjects, from the sculpture of Henry Moore to the art of writing, and edited an array of poetry anthologies. In 1975, however, Hall left his position at Michigan and returned to the Northeast, where he purchased his grandparents' New Hampshire farm. He moved there with poet Jane Kenyon, his second wife, and devoted himself to writing.

      He produced some 15 volumes of poetry, the most important of which was The One Day (1988), considered by many to be his masterpiece. This complex, technically intricate book-length poem earned him a National Book Critics Circle Award and a Pulitzer Prize nomination. He also published more than 10 books for children as well as numerous essays, short stories, and edited anthologies. Baseball remained one of Hall's enduring interests in his verse and prose. Kenyon's death in 1995 exerted a powerful influence on his work; the poems collected in Without (1998) and The Painted Bed (2002) were keen explorations of loss and grieving that cemented Hall's standing as a preeminent elegiac poet. The Best Day the Worst Day: Life with Jane Kenyon (2005) was a wrenching memoir.

      After taking his post in October as poet laureate, Hall, who owned neither a computer nor a typewriter, said he planned to spend time every six weeks in his office at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. He also hinted that he would like bring poetry to satellite radio.

J.E. Luebering

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▪ American poet, essayist and critic

in full  Donald Andrew Hall, Jr.  

born Sept. 20, 1928, New Haven, Conn., U.S.

      American poet, essayist, and critic, whose poetic style moved from studied formalism to greater emphasis on personal expression.

      Hall received bachelor's degrees in literature from both Harvard (1951) and Oxford (1953) universities and at the latter received the Newdigate Prize in 1952 for his poem Exile. He was a junior fellow at Harvard from 1954 to 1957 and then taught at the University of Michigan until 1975, when he moved to a farm in New Hampshire once owned by his grandparents. There he devoted himself to writing. Hall was poet laureate consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress from 2006 to 2007.

      The poems collected in Exiles and Marriages (1955) exhibit the influence of Hall's academic training: their style and structure are rigorously formal. In The Dark Houses (1958) he shows a richer emotional range, presaging the intuitive, anecdotal works for which he has become best known—e.g., A Roof of Tiger Lilies (1964) and The Alligator Bride (1968). The book-length The One Day: A Poem in Three Parts (1988), considered his masterpiece, is an intricate meditation on middle age. White Apples and the Taste of Stone (2006) is a collection of poetry from across his career.

      Hall's numerous prose works ranged widely, from Marianne Moore: The Cage and the Animal (1970) to a biography of the American sculptor Henry Moore (Moore, Henry). He edited anthologies of verse and of prose and wrote books for children. He also wrote works on baseball, including Fathers Playing Catch with Sons (1985).

      The death in 1995 of his wife, the poet Jane Kenyon, powerfully influenced his later work: the poetry collections Without (1998) and The Painted Bed (2002) explore loss and grieving, and The Best Day the Worst Day: Life with Jane Kenyon (2005) is a memoir.

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