Donald Hall

He was a graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy, Harvard University, and Christ Church, Oxford. Early in his career, he became the first poetry editor of The Paris Review (1953–1961), the quarterly literary journal, and was noted for interviewing poets and other authors on their craft. On June 14, 2006, Hall was appointed as the Library of Congress's 14th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry (commonly known as "Poet Laureate of the United States"). He is regarded as a "plainspoken, rural poet," and it has been said that, in his work, he "explores the longing for a more bucolic past and reflects [an] abiding reverence for nature." Hall was respected for his work as an academic, having taught at Stanford University, Bennington College and the University of Michigan, and having made significant contributions to the study and craft of writing.

Hall was born in Hamden, Connecticut, the only child of Donald Andrew Hall, a businessman, and Lucy Wells. He was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy, then earned an A.B. magna cum laude from Harvard in 1951, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and a B.Litt., from Christ Church, Oxford in 1953. Hall began writing even before reaching his teens, beginning with poems and short stories, and then moving on to novels and dramatic verse. He continued to write throughout his prep school years at Exeter, and, while still only sixteen years old, attended the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, where he made his first acquaintance with the poet Robert Frost. That same year, Hall published his first work. While an undergraduate at Harvard, he served on the editorial board of The Harvard Advocate, and got to know a number of people who, like him, were poised with significant ambitions in the literary world, amongst them John Ashbery, Robert Bly, Kenneth Koch, Frank O'Hara, and Adrienne Rich. During his senior year, Hall won the Glascock Prize that Koch had won 3 years earlier. After leaving Harvard, Hall went to Oxford for two years to study for the B.Litt. He was editor of the magazine Oxford Poetry, literary editor of Isis, editor of New Poems, and poetry editor of The Paris Review. At the end of his first Oxford year, he won the university's Newdigate Prize, awarded for his long poem, "Exile". In September 1952, he married his first wife, Kirby Thompson, with whom he had a son and daughter. Upon returning to the U.S., Hall went to Stanford University for one year as a creative writing fellow, studying under the poet-critic Yvor Winters. Hall then returned to Harvard, where he spent 1954–1957 in the Society of Fellows. During that time, he published his first book of poems, Exiles and Marriages. In 1957, he co-edited with Robert Pack and Louis Simpson a poetry anthology that was to make a significant impression on both sides of the Atlantic, New Poets of England and America. Its preference for formal, academic verse was later contrasted with Donald Allen's 1960 anthology, The New American Poetry 1945–1960, which emphasized experimental verse. From 1958 to 1964, Hall served as a member of the editorial board for poetry at Wesleyan University Press. In 1968, he signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.

In 1967, Hall and his wife, Kirby, separated; the couple divorced in 1969. While teaching at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, he met the poet Jane Kenyon, whom he married in 1972. Three years later, the couple moved to Eagle Pond Farm, his grandparents' former home in Wilmot, New Hampshire. Hall and Kenyon were profiled at their home in a 1993 PBS documentary, "A Life Together", which aired as an episode of Bill Moyers Journal. In 1989, when Hall was in his early sixties, it was discovered that he had colon cancer. Surgery followed, but by 1992 the cancer had metastasized to his liver. After another operation, and chemotherapy, he went into remission, though he was told that he only had a 1 in 3 chance of surviving the next five years. Then, early in 1994, it was discovered that Kenyon had leukemia. Her debilitating illness, her death fifteen months later, and Hall's struggle to come to terms with these tragedies, were the subject of his 1998 poetry collection, Without, which contains poems written in an epistolary format. A subsequent poetry collection dedicated to Kenyon, The Painted Bed, is cited by Publishers Weekly as "more controlled, more varied and more powerful, this taut follow-up volume 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. It examines mourning in 16 long-lined stanzas, alternating catalogue with aphorism, understatement with keen lament: 'How many times will he die in his own lifetime?'"

Hall published fifteen books of poetry. Two of these—The One Day (1988) and Old and New Poems (1990)—were included by critic Harold Bloom in his list of works constituting the Western Canon. Hall's later collections, "generally regarded as the best of his career", included Without (1998), The Painted Bed (2002), and White Apples and the Taste of Stone (2006). His recurring themes in poetry were New England rural living, baseball, and how work brings meaning to ordinary life. He was considered a master both of received forms and free verse, and a champion of the art of revision, for whom poetry is a craft, not merely a mode of self-expression. In addition to his poetry collections, Hall wrote children's books (notably Ox-Cart Man, which won the Caldecott Medal), several memoirs (such as String Too Short to be Saved, Life Work, and Unpacking the Boxes), and a number of plays. He also turned his hand to reviews, criticism, textbooks, sports journalism, and biographies. He devoted substantial time to editing, for example, between 1983 and 1996, he oversaw publication of more than sixty titles for the University of Michigan Press. Starting in 1994, he was closely affiliated with the Bennington College's graduate writing program, giving lectures and readings annually. Among Hall's many honours and awards were: the Lamont Poetry Prize for Exiles and Marriages (1955), the Edna St Vincent Millay Award (1956), two Guggenheim Fellowships (1963–64, 1972–73), inclusion on the Horn Book Honour List (1986), the Sarah Josepha Hale Award (1983), the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize (1987), the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry (1988), the NBCC Award (1989), the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in poetry (1989), and the Frost Medal (1990). He was nominated for the National Book Award on three occasions (1956, 1979 and 1993). In 1994, he received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for his lifetime achievement. For five years (1984–89), Hall was Poet Laureate of his home state, New Hampshire. He was subsequently appointed the fourteenth U.S. Poet Laureate, succeeding Ted Kooser. He began serving on October 1, 2006, and was succeeded the following year by Charles Simic. At the time of his appointment, Hall was profiled in an episode of The News Hour with Jim Lehrer which aired on October 16, 2006. Hall was awarded the 2010 National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama. Hall's penultimate work is a 2018 recording of an eleven-song cycle on the topic of mortality, entitled "Mortality Mansions: Songs of Love and Loss After 60." The poems/songs are written and read by Hall; the music is by Grammy Award-winning composer Herschel Garfein. His last book A Carnival of Losses: Essays Nearing Ninety was published on July 10, 2018.

Hall was the subject of "Great Gig in the Sky," the 5th track of Roger Waters' album The Dark Side of the Moon Redux, released on October 6th, 2023. The song discusses Hall's death, in which his assistant, Kendel Currier, contacts Waters informing him that Hall is in the hospital with sinus cancer. The song continues, eventually revealing that an estate sale was organized for the Eagle Pond Farm, where Waters requested "a couple of bale hooks and some baling twine from the barn." The lyrics refer to Hall's "red chair" - although his chair, famously, was blue. Whether this is a mistake or artistic licence is unclear. The song ends with "Well, R.I.P., Donald Hall."

Hall lived at Eagle Pond Farm in Wilmot, New Hampshire, a small town in Merrimack County. He was married to poet and author Jane Kenyon (1947–1995) for 23 years and lived with her until her death. Donald Hall died on June 23, 2018, at the age of 89, at his home in Wilmot.