A Successful Life
Donald Hall had a fantastic literary run, publishing poetry, essays, plays, children books, short stories, memoirs, and biographies. He served as poet laureate of the USA for one year beginning in October 2006. He received a boatload of honors. He worked as a teacher before taking to writing full time. I’m embarrassed to say I’d never heard of this important figure in American letters before his Essays After Eighty, published in 2014, came my way via a donation to the floating book shop. I don’t recall seeing him in Ken Burns’ baseball documentary, and I wasn’t aware of the documentary on his life or the profile Bill Moyers did on him. Fortunately, the essays do not focus entirely on the problems of aging. One Road is a terrific piece on his experiences driving through Europe with his first wife when both were in their 20’s. In Thank You Thank You, he discusses the ups and downs of poetry readings. He knew a female who, undaunted, took the stage despite the fact that there were only two people in the audience. When she finished she went to them to shake hands — and one was dead! In Garlic with Everything, he describes a dinner poet Robert Bly and his wife attended at his home. “…Bob got mad at me for being a professor and living in a house. He and Carol lived in western Minnesota without electricity, with oil lamps and an outhouse. He pouted and poured beer on my supper. Calmly I picked up my plate, scraped it clean in the kitchen, and served more Spanish rice from the pot on the stove. When I sat down I threw my beer in his face.” How refreshing that successful poets suffer the occasional idiocy most folks do. A lot of the narrative is devoted to nature, with which, as lover of big cities, I did not connect. But I loved the passages about his relatives, and the stages of his life in Connecticut and New Hampshire. Of course, as both a Harvard and Oxford grad, it was no surprise where he was politically. Fortunately, the potshots weren’t that many over the course of the 134 pages. As one would expect, the prose is first rate. 175 users at Amazon have rated Essays After Eighty, forging to a consensus of 4.3 on a scale of five. I wouldn’t go nearly that high, but I’m glad I got to know a little bit about one of the most successful modern poets ever and, apparently, an exemplary human being. Hall passed away in 2018 at 89. Here’s a pic:
The floating book shop opened an hour later than usual, delayed by rain. As is so often the case, a stiff wind was blowing along Avenue Z, so it wasn’t much fun out there. My thanks to Evelyn, whom I hadn’t seen in a while, and who bought It’s Always Something by SNL alum Gilda Radner and The Delany Sisters’ Book of Everyday Wisdom by Sarah Delany, A. Elizabeth Delany, et al.; and to Matt, who purchased White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg.
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