Discover the beauty of everyday life through the eyes of one of our
greatest living poets.
Join the Morning Book Group for our discussion of:
Life Work
by Donald Hall
From well-known poet and memoirist Hall, a meditation-memoir
on the theme of work that becomes something much more when, midway through the
writing, the author learns he has cancer. At 63, Hall is mightily productive in
poetry, memoir, essay, letter, story, and review, and he sets out to devote part
of each working day (for Hall, there are seven of these a week) to writing this
book, its title bespeaking its theme. In 1975, we learn, Hall gave up teaching
and became a full-time writer, retiring to the farm in Vermont that had once
belonged to his grandparents. As the book begins, Hall mourns the recent death
of a close friend, preacher, and hard worker; settles on a definition of
productive work as a state of ``absorbedness''; touches on history, family, his
own literary output, his great love of the work he does, the number of
revisions he puts poems through, what time he gets up, what he eats for
breakfast and lunch, even when he walks the dog and drops manuscripts off with
the typist. A phone call changes the tone of all of this when a routine blood test
shows a recurrence of cancer and sends the poet into surgery. A couple of weeks
later, facing both chemotherapy and newly diminished odds for living more than
another few years, Hall picks up his narrative and--keeps going. Under the
deepened shadow of mortality, he writes with eloquent simplicity about the
old-fashioned working farm-life of his Vermont grandparents, the declining
health of his aging mother, and--with a consummate and moving poise--his
father's unhappiness in his own work, and his early death from cancer. History,
life, work, art, dedication, love, and courage--all without becoming saccharine
or smug or maudlin, in a treasurable small book, poetic in its plainness, about
how to live well.
Useful Resources:
Bill Moyer: A Life Together: Poets Donald Hall and Jane Kenyon
UPENN: Kelly Writer's House
PBS News Hour December, 2006- Poet Laureate Donald Hall Reflects on Age and Nature
PBS News Hour October 2011
UNH: Life on Eagle Pond The Poetry of Donald Hall and Jane Kenyon
Eagle Pond: Word and Image
Donald Hall Papers, 1928-2014
NPR- At 86 Donald Hall Writes On
Donald Hall: Poetry Foundation
Library of Congress: Donald Hall Web Guide
Poetry at the Library of Congress
Academy of American Poets: Donald Hall
NPR- Points of View of the Window
A View from Poet Donald Hall's Window on Ageism
Paris Review Interview
The New Yorker - On National Poetry Month
The Atlantic Interview (1996)
Numero Cinq Interview
The American Scholar
Farmhouse as Muse
Poetry Foundation - Jane Kenyon
Jane Kenyon- Academy of American Poets
Wilmot, NH - Community Profile
Wilmot, NH Town Website
Bill Moyer: A Life Together: Poets Donald Hall and Jane Kenyon
UPENN: Kelly Writer's House
PBS News Hour December, 2006- Poet Laureate Donald Hall Reflects on Age and Nature
PBS News Hour October 2011
UNH: Life on Eagle Pond The Poetry of Donald Hall and Jane Kenyon
Eagle Pond: Word and Image
Donald Hall Papers, 1928-2014
NPR- At 86 Donald Hall Writes On
Donald Hall: Poetry Foundation
Library of Congress: Donald Hall Web Guide
Poetry at the Library of Congress
Academy of American Poets: Donald Hall
NPR- Points of View of the Window
A View from Poet Donald Hall's Window on Ageism
Paris Review Interview
The New Yorker - On National Poetry Month
The Atlantic Interview (1996)
Numero Cinq Interview
The American Scholar
Farmhouse as Muse
Poetry Foundation - Jane Kenyon
Jane Kenyon- Academy of American Poets
Wilmot, NH - Community Profile
Wilmot, NH Town Website
