POETRY · FICTION
Donald Hall
Also known as: Author Donald Hall, Donald Andrew Hall Jr.
Donald Andrew Hall Jr. (September 20, 1928 – June 23, 2018) was an American poet, writer, editor and literary critic. He was the author of over 50 books across several genres from children's literature, biography, memoir, essays, and including 22 volumes of verse. Hall was a graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy, Harvard, and Oxford. Early in his career, he became the first poetry editor of The Paris Review (1953–1961), the quarterly literary journal, and was noted for interviewing poets and other authors on their craft. On June 14, 2006, Hall was appointed as the Library of Congress's 14th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry (commonly known as "Poet Laureate of the United States"). He is regarded as a "plainspoken, rural poet," and it has been said that, in his work, he "explores the longing for a more bucolic past and reflects [an] abiding reverence for nature." Hall was respected for his work as an academic, having taught at Stanford University, Bennington College and the University of Michigan, and having made significant contributions to the study and craft of writing.
In New Hampshire we know ourselves by Winter-in snow, in cold, in darkness.
— from Seasons at Eagle Pond, 1987
Most acclaimed
The Yellow Room
1945
George Shipway’s two novels, [The Imperial Governor](/works/OL5476132W) and [The Knight](/works/OL5476124W), introduced a first-rate historical novelist to readers in the United States. He was praised not only for his meticulous research, but also for his “lean hard” style (Gerald Meyer, is the Des Moines Register) and “fascinating insight into the timeless military mind” (Martin Blumenson, in the Washington, DC. Star). Now, Mr. Shipway turns again to that same “timeless military mind” in a modern—and frequently funny—suspense tale. THE YELLOW ROOM is the story of a handful of retired, pukka sahib British military men who pass their hours sipping sherry and grumbling in the Yellow Room of their club while, in the streets outside, riots, revolution, and conspiracy threaten to topple the country they love so well. What they do to ensure that there will, indeed, always be an England, and what is done to them is a highly satisfying novel, an entertainment where honor summons crime to her needs, and murder joins hands with patriotism, and all are celebrated in most unusual, shocking, and often amusing, ways.
Back Chamber
"The first full-length volume of poems in a decade by former poet laureate of the United States Donald Hall. 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, sexy, hilarious, ironic, and sly--full of the life-affirming energy that has made Donald Hall one of America's most popular and enduring poets"--