Description: Hall's bestselling collection ever speaks of the death of his wife--his gift and testimony, his lament, and his celebration of loss and love.
Brief description:
DONALD HALL (1928-2018) served as poet laureate of the United States from 2006 to 2007. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a recipient of the National Medal of the Arts, awarded by the president.
Review Quotes:
"Hall's extraordinarily clear awareness of what is over and gone is more present and more appealing in words now than it could have found room to be in life.... It is as if they were not poems at all but experiences undergone with and by another human being." - New York Review of Books
"As riveting a poetic narrative as has come along in some time. Hall's melancholy deathwatch contains gripping dramatic interest as well as excellent poetry, with its unusually intimate focus on the painful process of losing a loved one to a prolonged wasting illness and then trying, somehow, to get over it." - San Francisco Chronicle
"Mr. Hall's poems on the death of his wife, the poet Jane Kenyon, are direct, devoid of obvious poetic devices, dependent on ordinary words and the patterns of the speaking voice. That voice, however, is extraordinarily moving as it evokes helplessness amid the tangle of medical equipment, the pain of watching a loved partner die, the feel of a house where "Your presence ... is almost as enormous / and painful as your absence." - The Atlantic