Donald+Hall,+2006-2007


 * Donald Hall (2006-2007) **

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 numerous books of poetry, most recently //White Apples and the Taste of Stone: Selected Poems 1946-2006// (2006); //The Painted Bed// (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 collections include //The One Day// (1988), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the //Los Angeles Times// Book Prize, and a Pulitzer Prize nomination; and //The Happy Man// (1986), which won the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize.

Besides poetry, Donald Hall has written books on baseball, the sculptor Henry Moore, and the poet [|Marianne Moore]. He is also the author of children's books as well as several autobiographical works, such as //The Best Day The Worst Day: Life with Jane Kenyon// (2005) and //Life Work// (1993), which won the New England Book award for nonfiction.

Hall 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// (1957), and //Contemporary American Poetry// (1962). He also served as poetry editor of //The Paris Review// from 1953 to 1962.

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." In the June 2006, Hall was appointed the Library of Congress's fourteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. He lives in Danbury, New Hampshire.


 * Love Poem **

When you fall in love, you jockey your horse into the flaming barn.

You hire a cabin on the shiny Titanic. You tease the black bear.

Reading the Monitor, you scan the obituaries looking for your name.