Hall, Donald 1999
December, nightfall at three-thirty.
I climb Mill Hill
past hawthorne and wild cherry,
mist in the hedgerows.
Smoke blows
from the orange edges of fire
working the wheat
stubble. “Putting
the goodness back,
into the soil.”
– Donald Hall, “Swan”
Read this interview with Donald Hall from the Paris Review:
The Art of Poetry No. 43
Donald Hall was born in New Haven and raised in Hamden, Connecticut, but spent summers, holidays, and school vacations on a farm owned by his maternal grandparents in Wilmot, New Hampshire. He took his bachelor’s degree at Harvard, then studied at Oxford for two years, earning an add…
She was all around me
like a rainy day,
and though I walked bareheaded
I was not wet. I walked
on a bare path
singing light songs
about women.
– Donald Hall, “The Blue Wing”
Watch Donald Hall discuss and read from his work:
Former National Poet Laureate Donald Hall recites his poetry, talks of his life
Former poet laureate Donald Hall talks with fellow poet Elizabeth Spires about what sparked his writing as a young man (movies like “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein”), his wild times with poets like Robert Bly at Harvard, and his return to his grandparents’ farm with wife and poet Jane Kenyon.
