Joining such notable poet laureates as Robert Frost, Rita Dove, Billy Collins and James Dickey, New Hampshire poet Donald Hall has become the 14th United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. South Carolina's poet laureate Marjory Wentworth writes in Poet laureate writes of ordinary things that Hall is one of America's most distinguished and respected literary figures. Educated at Harvard, Stanford and Oxford universities, he is an award-winning writer who has published 18 books of poetry, a memoir, essay collections and children's books.
In a farmhouse in rural New Hampshire, near where Robert Frost once lived, Hall shared a life with his wife poet Jane Kenyon for more than thirty years -- before her death to cancer. Bill Moyers featured the couple in the Emmy Award-winning documentary film A Life Together. Filmed in 1993, Hall had then recently recovered from cancer. Hall said at the time that the odds were against him living another ten years. Hall beat the odds. Kenyon did not.
Kenyon was in the prime of life, being in her 40's, when she died of leukemia, and Hall often speaks of her life and death with his poetry now published in a book called Without.
Wentworth says in her review of Without, "For anyone who has lost someone they love to cancer or any other illness, this collection of poems will touch you and provide solace. The day-to-day details will be painfully familiar, but it is a good thing to read his words and share in his grief. His gift is his ability to describe the kind of pain and loss that is indescribable for the rest of us."
When Wentworth attended a memorial reading in his wife's honor, she said Hall stated, "My heart is broken, and now I am breaking the world's heart." In addition to Wentworth's review, you can read an interview in conversation with Donald Hall and Judith Moore here.
