The Selected Poems of Donald Hall

Former poet laureate Donald Hall selects the essential work from a moving and brilliant life in poetry. The ability to write poems has “abandoned” Donald Hall, now in his eighties, one of the most significant — and beloved — poets of his generation. Instead of creating new poems, he has looked back over his astonishingly rich body of work and hand-picked poems for this final, concise volume that will delight, and endure. The Selected Poems of Donald Hall is the definitive collection, showcasing poems rich with humor and eros and “a kind of simplicity that succeeds in engaging the reader in the first few lines” (Billy Collins). “However wrenching [Hall’s poems] may be from line to line, they tell a story that is essentially reassuring: art and love are compatible, genius is companionable, and people stand by one another in the end” (New York Times Book Review).

New England Connection: Born in Connecticut, educated at Harvard, and a 40 year inhabitant of Eagle Pond Farm in New Hampshire, Donald is a New Englander through and through. His poetry and prose reflects his deep love of the region, and are infused with scenes of rural life, the beauty of the land, the passions and dreams of its people, and its history.

Jacket cover and author photo courtesy of Mifflin Harcourt