Hall, Donald

Hall, Donald

(Donald Andrew Hall, Jr.), 1928–2018, American poet, b. New Haven, Conn., grad. Harvard (B.A., 1951), Oxford (1953). He published more than 50 books, ranging from poetry, short stories, plays, and children's books to memoirs, essays, textbooks, and biographies. As a poet, his themes usually involved his beloved bucolic New England past and present, aging and mortality, nature, and baseball; all described in direct, plain-spoken language. His poetry collections include Exiles and Marriages (1955), The Happy Man (1986), The One Day (1989, National Book Critics Circle Award), and The Selected Poems of Donald Hall (2015). Hall was married (1972–95) to the poet Jane Kenyon, whose untimely death inspired Without (1998) and The Painted Bed (2002) as well as a memoir (2005). Other memoirs include Life Work (2003) and Unpacking the Boxes: A Memoir of a Life in Poetry (2009). Among his children's books is The Ox-Cart Man (1979, Caldecott Medal). Hall was U.S. poet laureate (2006–7) and received (2011) the National Medal of Arts.

Hall, Donald (Andrew, Jr.)

(1928– ) poet; born in New Haven, Conn. (husband of Jane Kenyon). He studied at Harvard (B.A. 1951), Oxford University (B. Litt. 1953), and Stanford (1953–54). He taught at the University of Michigan (1957–75), became a free-lance writer in 1975, and worked as a television and radio broadcaster. He wrote plays, literary criticism, children's stories, books about baseball, and a memoir, String Too Short to Be Saved (1961). An editor of numerous poetry anthologies, he is best known as a tough, witty lyric poet, as seen in The Museum of Clear Ideas (1993). He and his wife lived in Wilmot, N.H.