The former U.S. poet laureate presents the essential work from across his long and celebrated career in this sweeping collection. For decades, Donald Hall produced a body of work that established him as one of America’s most significant—and beloved—poets of his generation. Celebrated for his plainspoken yet evocative imagery and his stirring explorations of bucolic life, Hall won numerous awards, including the Robert Frost Medal, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, and the National Medal of Arts. When Hall reached his eighties, his health began to decline, and he announced that the ability to write poems has “abandoned” him. Looking back over his astonishingly rich body of work, Hall hand-picked his finest and most memorable poems for this final, concise, and essential volume.
“With The One Day, this is his best work, a modest, skeptical, and brave poetry that embodies something essential about this late American century.” —Harvard Review This is Donald Hall’s most advanced work, extending his poetic reach even beyond his recent volumes. Conflict dominates this book, and conflict unites it. Hall takes poetry as an instrument for revelation, whether in an elegy for a (fictional) contemporary poet, or in the title series of poems, whose form imitates the first book of the Odes of Horace. The book’s final section, “Extra Innings,” moves with poignancy to questions about the end of the game. “A stunning volume of testamentary verse . . . an often perfect American blend of rue and buoyancy, narrative verve and grace.” —The New Yorker “Donald Hall is our finest elegist. The Museum of Clear Ideas is as original, idiosyncratic, and un-museumlike a poetic work as we are likely to see for a long time to come.” —Richard Tillinghast, The New Criterion “Hall’s poems make ‘durable relics’ of late twentieth-century life in much the same way that Byron’s Don Juan does for the early nineteenth. The ‘clear ideas,’ however, are timeless.” —Beloit Poetry Journal “These are some of the darkest lines Donald Hall has ever composed. They move through aching poignancy through illness diagnosed, sorrow, and poignant revelation, yet the final chord is not one of despair.” —Robert Taylor, Boston Globe “A collection of powerful new poems . . . Hall’s voice is more mature and classically spare than ever, offering revelatory glimpses of wisdom.” —Publishers Weekly “A brilliantly inventive tour de force . . . A significant and engaging book.” —Library Journal
Winner of the Caldecott Medal Thus begins a lyrical journey through the days and weeks, the months, and the changing seasons in the life of one New Englander and his family. The oxcart man packs his goods - the wool from his sheep, the shawl his wife made, the mittens his daughter knitted, and the linen they wove. He packs the birch brooms his son carved, and even a bag of goose feathers from the barnyard geese. He travels over hills, through valleys, by streams, past farms and villages. At Portsmouth Market he sells his goods, one by one - even his beloved ox. Then, with his pockets full of coins, he wanders through the market, buying provisions for his family, and returns to his home. And the cycle begins again. "Like a pastoral symphony translated into picture book format, the stunning combination of text and illustrations recreates the mood of 19-century rural New England."—The Horn Book
A collection of stories by the former US poet laureate, “a first-rate work by an author whose control over the tools of his genre is impeccable” (Publishers Weekly). A contemplative selection of twelve short stories from the celebrated author Donald Hall, Willow Temple focuses on the effects of divorce, adultery, and neglect. Hall’s stories are reminiscent of those of Alice Munro and William Maxwell in their mastery of form and their ability to trace the emotional fault lines connecting generations. “From Willow Temple” is the indelible story of a child’s witness of her mother’s adultery and the loss that underlies it. Three stories present David Bardo at crucial junctures of his life, beginning as a child drawn to his parents’ “cozy adult coven of drunks” and growing into a young man whose intense first affair undergirds a lifelong taste for ardor and betrayal. In this superbly perceptive collection, Hall gives memorable accounts of the passionate weight of lives. “[Hall possesses] a consistent gift for delicate description.” —The New York Times Book Review “Hall is comfortable with small stages—a tavern, a summer music camp, a farm, an artist’s studio, a junior college classroom, a cemetery, a bakery. But the quiet dramas that boil up in such places . . . are never small.” —Chicago Tribune “Understated lyricism very much in what William Carlos Williams (whom Hall often resembles) called the ‘American grain.’ Moving and memorable.” —Kirkus Reviews “A writer who attains the same high level of the game in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.” —The Boston Globe “[Willow Temple] attests to Hall’s mastery as a storyteller, the prose lyrical and elegiac as he moving unfolds each character’s frailties.” —Ploughshares
Former United States poet laureate Donald Hall reflects on his life, discussing his childhood in Connecticut, the works that influenced him, his education, his success and failures as a writer and father, his friendships, and other related topics.
The prize-winning poet’s collection of autobiographical poems is “the work of a master, all the more poignant for its frankness . . . in the face of tragedy” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette). One of America’s most celebrated poets, Donald Hall was at the height of his powers when he wrote The Old Life. Intimate, anecdotal and often funny, these autobiographical poems follow Hall from his boyhood to his developing acquaintance with fellow poets—including seniors like Robert Frost and contemporaries like Robert Bly. They chronicle Hall’s growing into manhood, fatherhood, grandfatherhood, and a happy second marriage. In the final poem, “Without,” Hall laments the illness of his late wife, Jane Kenyon. “These autobiographical poems are free of self-pity, engagingly frank without being in any sense ‘confessional,’ and often wildly comical . . . All are first-rate.” —Minneapolis Star-Tribune
In these tender essays, Hall shares his memories and thoughts on growing up in New Hampshire on his grandparent's dairy farm, of the seasons, and of his connection to the land, his family, and his coming home.
If we believe that the most engaging people have eclectic interests, then Donald Hall is incontrovertibly our most engaging man of letters. Prize-winning poet, teacher, essayist, children's book writer, Hall here reflects on some of the things he holds most dear: his family home at New Hampshire's Eagle Pond, baseball, poetry, artists and writers named Henry (Moore, Adams, and James), trees, politics, graveyards, basketball, and reading out loud. Collected here for the first time are Hall's reminiscences of time spent with the sculptor Henry Moore, appreciations of his sports heroes such as Bob Cousy, Red Auerbach, Carlton Fisk, and his insightful and inspiring readings of fellow poets, E. A. Robinson, Andrew Marvell, James Wright, and others. This undeniably eclectic mix is a celebration and catalog of a writer's subjects. In Hall's words, "The title should please not only for its prodigious procession of p's but for bringing back memories of rote recitation standing in the third grade doing the multiplication tables, 7's maybe, or maybe the principal products of Portugal." Hall's dedication to the written word will be familiar to readers of his poetry and his autobiographical essay Life Work, a "sustained meditation on work as the key to personal happiness," according to the Los Angeles Times. Principal Products of Portugal gives Hall's readers a fresh perspective on familiar subjects as well as a deeper appreciation for the making of a reader, writer, and poet.
The first full-length volume of poems in a decade by the former poet laureate of the United States In The Back Chamber, Donald Hall illuminates the evocative, iconic objects of deep memory—a cowbell, a white stone perfectly round, a three-legged milking stool—that serve to foreground the rich meditations on time and mortality that run through his remarkable new collection. While Hall’s devoted readers will recognize many of his long-standing preoccupations—baseball, the family farm, love, sex, and friendship—what will strike them as new is the fierce, pitiless poignancy he reveals as his own life’s end comes into view. The Back Chamber is far from being death-haunted, but rather is lively, irreverent, erotic, hilarious, ironic, and sly—full of the life-affirming energy that has made Donald Hall one of America’s most popular and enduring poets.
The former US poet laureate delivers a book “filled with raw sexual disclosures, rowdy anger and a self-blasting mockery” (The New York Times). Donald Hall’s fourteenth collection opens with an epigraph from the Urdu poet Faiz: “The true subject of poetry is the loss of the beloved.” In that poetic tradition, as in The Painted Bed, the beloved might be a person or something else—life itself, or the disappearing countryside. Hall’s new poems further the themes of love, death, and mourning so powerfully introduced in his Without (1998), but from the distance of passed time. A long poem, “Daylilies on the Hill 1975-1989,” moves back to the happy repossession of the poet’s old family house and its history—a structure that “persisted against assaults” as its generations of residents could not. These poems are by turns furious and resigned, spirited and despairing—”mania is melancholy reversed,” as Hall writes in another long poem, “Kill the Day.” In this book’s fourth and final section, “Ardor,” the poet moves toward acceptance of new life in old age; eros reemerges. “More controlled, more varied and more powerful, this taut follow-up volume [to Without] reexamines Hall’s grief while exploring the life he has made since. The book’s first poem, ‘Kill the Day,’ stands among the best Hall has ever written.” —Publishers Weekly “A compelling, sometimes shocking, and certainly deeply moving depiction of bereavement.” —Poetry “Hall has continued growing as a poet, and his steady readers may consider this his finest collection . . . Bleakness and beauty characterize the reminiscent lyrics that follow, too, joined by a breathtaking bluntness.” —Booklist
Spanning the entire career of the celebrated American poet, a collection of 226 works represents sixty years of poetic endeavor, including recent poems and a CD containing readings by the author.
This collection brings together for the first time all of Hall's writing on Eagle Pond Farm, his ancestral home in New Hampshire. It includes "Seasons at Eagle Pond" and "Here at Eagle Pond," the poem RDaylilies on the Hill, S and other essays.
Co-authored by two esteemed writers, "Writing Well," is a beautifully-written and thoroughly readable guide to the craft of writing prose. This concise, lively text covers all aspects of writing but is best known for its signature chapters on words, sentences, and paragraphs. Going beyond the basics of composition, the text teaches originality and elegance in writing encouraging students to develop their own written voice. Sample student papers including several works-in-progress - allow students to learn the writing process through the work of their peers. A brief handbook section rounds out the coverage.
The essays in Fathers Playing Catch with Sons are a wonderful mixture of reminiscence and observation, of baseball and of fathers and sons, of how a game binds people together and bridges generations. In the pantheon of great sports literature, not a few poets have tried their hand at paying tribute to their love affair with the game--Walt Whitman, Marianne Moore, and William Carlos Williams among them. This elegant volume collects Donald Hall's prose about sports, concentrating on baseball but extending to basketball, football and Ping-Pong.
Donald Hall draws on his own childhood memories and gives himself the thing he most wanted but didn't get as a boy: a Christmas at Eagle Pond. It’s the Christmas season of 1940, and twelve-year-old Donnie takes the train to visit his grandparents' place in rural New Hampshire. Once there, he quickly settles into the farm’s routines. In the barn, Gramp milks the cows and entertains his grandson by speaking rhymed pieces, while Donnie’s eyes are drawn to an empty stall that houses a graceful, cobwebby sleigh. Now Model A's speed over the wintry roads, which must be plowed, and the beautiful sleigh has become obsolete. When the church pageant is over, the gifts are exchanged, and the remains of the Christmas feast put away, the air becomes heavy with fine snowflakes—the kind that fall at the start of a big storm—and everyone wonders, how will Donnie get back to his parents on time?
Beginning in 1983, Donald Hall and his late wife, poet Jane Kenyon, sent Christmas cards with one of Donald's poems (one year with a poem by Jane). The cards were illustrated by various artists and printed on a letterpress by New Hampshire publisher and printer Bill Ewert. These poems have been gathered in Winter Poems from Eagle Pond, together with a short introduction by Hall and two woodblock prints by artist Barry Moser. --Donald Hall.
Susquehanna University's history from 1858 to 2000 has occurred in three stages, each expressing a different mission. The school was founded in 1858 as the Missionary Institute of the Evangelical Lutheran Church to fulfill the vision of the Rev. Benjamin Kurtz, a Lutheran cleric and editor of the Lutheran Observer. He was a partisan of the American Lutheran viewpoint caught up in a fratricidal battle with Lutheran orthodoxy. The Missionary Institute sustained his viewpoint in the preparation, gratis, of men called to preach the gospel in foreign and home missions. A complementary purpose was to educate young people in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania at both the Institute and its sister school, the Susquehanna Female College. When the Female College folded in 1873, the Institute became coeducational.
In this "furiously funny" new novel from Donald Westlake, career thief John Dortmunder is back to steal a fleet of vintage cars from a corrupt CEO (New York Times). The con is on. The mark is Monroe Hall, a CEO who lavished more of his company's money on himself than the boys at Enron and WorldCom combined. The loot? A fleet of vintage automobiles that would leave the Sultan of Brunei blushing. The catch? Trying to outsmart a collection of angry union men who've been taken for a ride and blue-blooded suckers who've been taken for their family fortunes. But if Dortmunder and his merry band of crooks are to drive off with the loot, they'll have to act fast -- before they get caught in a deadly crossfire.
Developed just after the close of the Civil War, the Springfield Gas Machine was a unique commercial and domestic gas lighting system marketed for use in homes and businesses outside of a city’s gas works. The self-contained unit was perfectly suited to accommodate an expanding rural and suburban U.S. landscape as middle- and upper-class American families were looking to find simplicity in the countryside without losing any modern comforts of the city. Industries, too, were looking for a means to operate more efficiently and implement longer work hours for various production operations. Perhaps more important, owners of the Springfield system could retain control of their light production during a time when corporations were reaping large benefits from their monopolistic hold over municipal gas works. In addition to detailing preserved Springfield systems across the country, Donald W. Linebaugh uses newspapers and magazine articles, advertisements, patents, and even mail-order catalogs to tell the story of this one-of-a-kind unit. The Gilbert and Barker Manufacturing Company's innovative business plan established them as a leader in the manufacture of gas lighting devices. By taking gasoline from an oft-discarded byproduct of refining crude oil to a viable fuel source, the company paved the way for other gas-powered appliances to improve household management strategies and industrial production. In capturing the pre-automobile market for gasoline, Gilbert and Barker attracted the attention of the Standard Oil Trust, presaging the oil-industry dominance over gasoline production that continues today. The story of the Springfield gas machine ends in the early twentieth century as the advent of electricity proved more available to the masses with considerably less expense. However, gas lighting was, for its time, a major innovation in domestic and commercial lighting, and it changed daily life and social behaviors in the late nineteenth century as the comforts of home became a reality for suburban and rural Americans.
One of the American Planning Association’s most popular and influential books is finally in paperback, with a new preface from the author on how thinking about parking has changed since this book was first published. In this no-holds-barred treatise, Donald Shoup argues that free parking has contributed to auto dependence, rapid urban sprawl, extravagant energy use, and a host of other problems. Planners mandate free parking to alleviate congestion but end up distorting transportation choices, debasing urban design, damaging the economy, and degrading the environment. Ubiquitous free parking helps explain why our cities sprawl on a scale fit more for cars than for people, and why American motor vehicles now consume one-eighth of the world's total oil production. But it doesn't have to be this way. Shoup proposes new ways for cities to regulate parking – namely, charge fair market prices for curb parking, use the resulting revenue to pay for services in the neighborhoods that generate it, and remove zoning requirements for off-street parking. Such measures, according to the Yale-trained economist and UCLA planning professor, will make parking easier and driving less necessary. Join the swelling ranks of Shoupistas by picking up this book today. You'll never look at a parking spot the same way again.
A classic text in the field, providing a readable and accessible guide for students of electrical and electronic engineering. Ideal for undergraduates, the book is also an invaluable reference for graduate students and others wishing to explore this rapidly expanding field." -Cover.
While John and Kirstie Raven are in Paris they come across an old college friend of Kirstie's, Kirk Cameron. Learning he is coming to London in an attempt to raise some funds, Kirstie insists he stay with them on their houseboat in Chelsea. What Cameron doesn't tell his hosts is that he has agreed to help a casual acquaintance in a little 'industrial espionage': and what Cameron hasn't been told is that he is to be involved in robbing a safety deposit box . . .
Through seven editions and twenty years, All You Need to Know About the Music Industry has been the essential go-to reference for music business pros--musicians, songwriters, entertainment lawyers, agents, concert promoters, music publishers, record company execs, and music managers--as they try to navigate the rapid transformation of their industry. -- From publisher description.
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