Donald Hall

Donald Hall was born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1928. He began writing as an adolescent and attended the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference at the age of sixteen--the same year he had his first work published. He earned a B.A. from Harvard in 1951 and a B. Litt. from Oxford in 1953. Donald Hall has published fifteen books of poetry, most recently The Painted Bed (Houghton Mifflin, 2002) and Without: Poems (1998), which was published on the third anniversary of his wife and fellow poet Jane Kenyon's death from leukemia. Other notable collection include The One Day (1988), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and a Pulitzer Prize nomination; The Happy Man (1986), which won the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; and Exiles and Marriages (1955), which was the Academy's Lamont Poetry Selection for 1956.
Besides poetry, Donald Hall has written books on baseball, the sculptor Henry Moore, and the poet Marianne Moore; children's books, including Ox-Cart Man (1979), which won the Caldecott Medal; short stories; and plays. He has also published several autobiographical works, such as Life Work (1993), which won the New England Book award for nonfiction, and has edited more than two dozen textbooks and anthologies, including The Oxford Book of Children's Verse in America (1990), The Oxford Book of American Literary Anecdotes (1981), New Poets of England and America (with Robert Pack and Louis Simpson, 1957), and Contemporary American Poetry (1962; revised 1972). He served as poetry editor of The Paris Review from 1953 to 1962, and as a member of editorial board for poetry at Wesleyan University Press from 1958 to 1964.
His honors include two Guggenheim fellowships, the Poetry Society of America's Robert Frost Silver medal, a Lifetime Achievement award from the New Hampshire Writers and Publisher Project, and the Ruth Lilly Prize for poetry. Hall also served as Poet Laureate of New Hampshire from 1984 to 1989. In December 1993 he and Jane Kenyon were the subject of an Emmy Award-winning Bill Moyers documentary, "A Life Together." He lives in Danbury, New Hampshire.
This bio was last updated on Mar 26, 2002.
A Selected Bibliography
Poetry
To the Loud Wind and Other Poems (1955)
Exiles and Marriages (1955)
The Dark Houses (1958)
A Roof of Tiger Lilies (1964)
The Alligator Bride: Poems, New and Selected (1969)
The Yellow Room: Love Poems (1971)
The Town of Hill (1975)
A Blue Wing Tilts at the Edge of the Sea: Selected Poems, 1964-1974 (1975)
Kicking the Leaves: Poems (1978)
The Toy Bone (1979)
The Happy Man (1986)
The One Day (1988)
Old and New Poems (1990)
Here at Eagle Pond (1992)
The Museum of Clear Ideas (1996)
The Old Life (1996)
Without (1998)
The Painted Bed (2002)
Prose
String Too Short to Be Saved: Recollections of Summers on a New England Farm (1961) illustrated by Mimi Korach; expanded edition (1979).
Henry Moore: The Life and Work of a Great Sculptor (1966)
As the Eye Moves: A Sculpture by Henry Moore (1970) illustrated with photographs by David Finn.
Marianne Moore: The Cage and the Animal (1970)
The Pleasures of Poetry (1971)
Writing Well (1974)
Dock Ellis in the Country of Baseball (1976) with Dock Ellis.
Goatfoot Milktongue Twinbird: Interviews, Essays, and Notes on Poetry, 1970-76 (1978)
Remembering Poets: Reminiscences and Opinions--Dylan Thomas, Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound (1978) ; revised edition published as Their Ancient Glittering Eyes (1992).
To Read Literature (1980)
The Weather for Poetry: Essays, Reviews, and Notes on Poetry, 1977-81 (1982)
Seasons at Eagle Pond (1987) illustrated by Thomas W. Nason
Poetry and Ambition (1988)
Life Work (1993)
Death to the Death of Poetry: Essays, Reviews, Notes, Interviews (1994)
The Farm Summer, 1942 (1994)
Old Home Day (1994)
Principal Products of Portugal: Prose Pieces (1995)
Letters
The Ideal Bakery (1987) short stories.
Essays
To Keep Moving: Essays, 1959-1969 (1980)
Fathers Playing Catch with Sons: Essays on Sport (Mostly Baseball) (1985)
Winter (1986) with Clifton C. Olds.
Drama
An Evening's Frost (1965) produced Off-Broadway.
Bread and Roses (1975) produced in Ann Arbor, MI.
Ragged Mountain Elegies (1983) produced in Peterborough, NH; revised version produced as The Bone Ring, New York, NY (1986).
For Children
Andrew and the Lion Farmer (1959) illustrated by Jane Miller; illustrated by Ann Reason (1961).
Riddle Rat (1977) illustrated by Mort Gerberg.
Ox-Cart Man (1979) illustrated by Barbara Cooney.
The Man Who Lived Alone (1984) illustrated by Mary Azarian.
Summer of 1944 (1994) illustrated by Barry Moser.
I Am the Dog, I Am the Cat (1994)
Lucy's Christmas (1994)
Lucy's Summer (1995)
When Willard Met Babe Ruth (1996) illustrated by Barry Moser.
Old Home Day (1996)
The Milkman's Boy (1997)
Donald Hall exhibits elsewhere on the web: Work That Builds a Sense of Home An interview for the Christian Science Monitor, November 6, 1991, by Steven Ratiner. Life at Eagle Pond: The Poetry of Jane Kenyon and Donald Hall Exhibit created and maintained by William E. Ross, Special Collections Librarian, University of New Hampshire Library. Donald Hall: extracts from the conversation with Ian Hamilton From the Between the Lines Interviews with Poets series. Interview excerpt By Jeffrey S. Cramer for Meridian Issue 4 - Fall 1999. Donald Hall in conversation with Judith Moore From the San Diego Reader, 1998. Reprinted at the Poetry Daily site. An Interview with Donald Hall [December 1996-January 1997] By Cooper Esteban for elimae.com. (You have to go to the archives to find this piece.) A Conversation with Donald Hall Allan Reeder interviewed Hall for The Atlantic Monthly, October 1996. Poetry's Muchness and Manyness An essay by Hall for elimae.com (in the archives). Assorted poems From the public database at vers libre. "The Barber" From Meridian Issue 4 - Fall 1999. "When the young husband..." Text and RealAudio, at the Atlantic Unbound site. "The Wedding Couple" Text and RealAudio, at the Atlantic Unbound site. "Distressed Haiku" Text and RealAudio, at the Atlantic Unbound site. Two poems "Razor" and "Affirmation," from Poetry Daily. AffirmationDeath to the Death of PoetryFlying Revision's Flag

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