Hall, Donald (1928-2018), an American poet, was appointed poet laureate of the United States for 2006-2007. From 1975 until his death, Hall lived in a farmhouse in New Hampshire that his family had owned since 1865. Hall used direct and simple language to explore his appreciation of nature and his love of rural living. Many of his poems reflect his frequent visits to New Hampshire as a boy and his respect for tradition, the pleasures of everyday existence, and continuity between generations.
Hall wrote on a variety of topics, including baseball, farm life, and death. He was married to the American poet Jane Kenyon from 1972 until her death from leukemia in 1995. His wife’s death inspired some of his most moving poems, notably those in Without: Poems (1998). One of his best-known poems is “Baseball” from his collection The Museum of Clear Ideas (1993). He organized the poem like a nine-inning baseball game, with nine sections, each consisting of nine verses. An anthology of Hall’s poetry was published in 2006 as White Apples and the Taste of Stone: Selected Poems, 1946-2006. A later collection was published as The Back Chamber (2011). The Selected Poems of Donald Hall was published in 2015.
In addition to his many volumes of poetry, Hall wrote books of prose and children’s books and edited anthologies of poetry. His prose works include the autobiography String Too Short to Be Saved (1961, expanded 1979); the memoirs The Best Day the Worst Day: Life with Jane Kenyon (2005) and Unpacking the Boxes (2008); and the autobiographical essays collected in Seasons at Eagle Pond (1987), Here at Eagle Pond (1990), Essays After Eighty (2014), and A Carnival of Losses: Notes Nearing Ninety (2018). Among his books on baseball is the 1985 collection Fathers Playing Catch with Sons: Essays on Sport (Mostly Baseball). Hall also wrote many essays on poets and poetry, including Remembering Poets (1978, revised as Their Ancient Glittering Eyes: Remembering Poets and More Poets, 1992) and Breakfast Served Any Time All Day: Essays on Poetry New and Selected (2003).
Donald Andrew Hall, Jr., was born on Sept. 20, 1928, in New Haven, Connecticut. He received a B.A. degree from Harvard University in 1951 and a B.Lit. degree from Oxford University in England in 1953. Hall first gained recognition as a poet with his collection Exiles and Marriages (1955). He was a professor of English at the University of Michigan from 1957 to 1975. He became writer-in-residence at Bennington College in Vermont in 1994. Hall died on June 23, 2018.
