Donald Hall Summary

New England writer Donald Hall (born 1928) is a major poet in the lineage of Robert Frost. Memoirist, short story writer, essayist, dramatist, critic, and anthologist as well as poet, he is one of the... Read more

In the following interview, Hall discusses his body of work and the state of contemporary poetry and poetry criticism. [Rector:] You've written poignantly about time and generation. Jose Ortega... Read more

In the following review, Pollack offers a positive assessment of The One Day and classifies the poem as a modernist work. Born in Hamden, Conn. in 1928, Donald Hall has lived since 1975 in a New Hamps... Read more

In the following interview, Hall discusses the process he used to write The One Day and the events that inspired the poem. [Myers:] Your work on The One Day lasted more than a decade, I believe. How l... Read more

In the following review, the critic offers a positive assessment of Their Ancient Glittering Eyes. “Curiosity endures, surviving criticism or philosophy,” affirms poet and critic Hall (H... Read more

In the following review, Sherry offers a positive assessment of both Life Work and The Museum of Clear Ideas. [Life Work and The Museum of Clear Ideas] are olympian books. They are wise, but are writt... Read more

In the following review, Thorpe offers a mixed assessment of Life Work, faulting the work for indulging in too much “name-dropping.” There are plenty of definitions of work, including th... Read more

In the following review, Goldstein assesses three examples of Hall's nonfiction works—Principal Products of Portugal, Death to the Death of Poetry, and Life Work,—and explores wha... Read more

In the following interview, Hall discusses the death of his wife (poet Jane Kenyon), his editing of her last collection of poetry, and Without, his own poetry collection about their life together. Eag... Read more

In the following interview, Hall discusses his relationship with his late wife and how he has coped emotionally since her death. Anyone acquainted with the story of Donald Hall and Jane Kenyon cannot ... Read more

In the following positive review, Ullman compliments Hall's candor and his ability to put his grief into words in Without. Grief's soundings—their depth and intricacy—arise... Read more

Critical Essay by Roger Garfitt Donald Hall is another of the men-about-Parnassus … which makes it all the more surprising that in the central poems of A Blue Wing Tilts at the Edge of the Sea,... Read more

Critical Essay by Irvin Ehrenpreis [Biography] is central to Donald Hall's Remembering Poets. His book is mainly a gathering of well-told anecdotes about the author's relations with Fros... Read more