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Here at Eagle Pond
From "Publishers Weekly:"
A companion to 'Seasons at Eagle Pond,' these witty and perceptive essays capture the essence of New England, past and present. From his ancestral home in Wilmot, N.H., poet Hall reminisces about his childhood, family history and the pleasures of country life. In "Rusticus" he discusses rural culture and its independence, conservatism and sense of continuity. How do New Hampshire citizens feel about their presidential primary? See "Living Room Politics." Hall takes jabs at neighboring Vermont; he ruminates on the weather--the seasons are maple sugar, blackfly, Red Sox and winter--and draws a composite picture of the countryfolk. Hall is to New Hampshire what John Gould is to Maine.
ISBN: 089919978X \ ISBN-13: 9780899199788
A companion to 'Seasons at Eagle Pond,' these witty and perceptive essays capture the essence of New England, past and present. From his ancestral home in Wilmot, N.H., poet Hall reminisces about his childhood, family history and the pleasures of country life. In "Rusticus" he discusses rural culture and its independence, conservatism and sense of continuity. How do New Hampshire citizens feel about their presidential primary? See "Living Room Politics." Hall takes jabs at neighboring Vermont; he ruminates on the weather--the seasons are maple sugar, blackfly, Red Sox and winter--and draws a composite picture of the countryfolk. Hall is to New Hampshire what John Gould is to Maine.
ISBN: 089919978X \ ISBN-13: 9780899199788
141 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1990
2 people are currently reading
75 people want to read
About the author
Donald Hall
187 books201 followersDonald Hall was considered one of the major American poets of his generation.
His poetry explores the longing for a more bucolic past and reflects the poet’s abiding reverence for nature. Although Hall gained early success with his first collection, Exiles and Marriages (1955), his later poetry is generally regarded as the best of his career. Often compared favorably with such writers as James Dickey, Robert Bly, and James Wright, Hall used simple, direct language to evoke surrealistic imagery. In addition to his poetry, Hall built a respected body of prose that includes essays, short fiction, plays, and children’s books. Hall, who lived on the New Hampshire farm he visited in summers as a boy, was also noted for the anthologies he has edited and is a popular teacher, speaker, and reader of his own poems.
Born in 1928, Hall grew up in Hamden, Connecticut. The Hall household was marked by a volatile father and a mother who was “steadier, maybe with more access to depths because there was less continual surface,” as Hall explained in an essay for Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series (CAAS). “To her I owe my fires, to my father my tears. I owe them both for their reading.” By age twelve, Hall had discovered the poet and short story writer Edgar Allan Poe: “I read Poe and my life changed,” he remarked in CAAS. Another strong influence in Hall’s early years was his maternal great-grandfather’s farm in New Hampshire, where he spent many summers. Decades later, he bought the same farm and settled there as a full-time writer and poet.
Hall attended Philips Exeter Academy and had his first poem published at age 16. He was a participant at the prestigious Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, where he met Robert Frost, that same year. From Exeter, Hall went to Harvard University, attending class alongside Adrienne Rich, Robert Bly, Frank O’Hara, and John Ashbery; he also studied for a year with Archibald MacLeish. Hall earned a BLitt from Oxford University and won the Newdigate contest for his poem “Exile,” one of the few Americans ever to win the prize. Returning to the United States, Hall spent a year at Stanford, studying under the poet-critic Yvor Winters, before returning to Harvard to join the prestigious Society of Fellows. It was there that Hall assembled Exiles and Marriages, a tightly-structured collection crafted in rigid rhyme and meter. In 1953, Hall also became the poetry editor of the Paris Review, a position he held until 1961. In 1957 he took a position as assistant professor of English at the University of Michigan, where he remained until 1975. While at Michigan, Hall met the young Jane Kenyon. They later married and, when Hall’s grandmother, who owned Eagle Pond Farm, passed away, bought the farm, left teaching, and moved there together. The collections Kicking the Leaves (1978) and The Happy Man (1986) reflect Hall’s happiness at his return to the family farm, a place rich with memories and links to his past. Many of the poems explore and celebrate the continuity between generations. The Happy Man won the Lenore Marshall/Nation Prize. Hall’s next book, The One Day (1988), won the National Book Critics Circle Award. A long poem that meditates on the on-set of old age, The One Day, like much of Hall’s early work, takes shape under formal pressure: composed of 110 stanzas, split over three sections, its final sections are written in blank verse. The critic Frederick Pollack praised the book as possibly “the last masterpiece of American Modernism. Any poet who seeks to surpass this genre should study it; any reader who has lost interest in contemporary poetry should read it.” Old and New Poems (1990) contains several traditional poems from earlier collections, as well as more innovative verses not previously published. “Baseball,” included in The Museum of Clear Ideas (1993), is the poet’s ode to the great American pastime and is structured around t
His poetry explores the longing for a more bucolic past and reflects the poet’s abiding reverence for nature. Although Hall gained early success with his first collection, Exiles and Marriages (1955), his later poetry is generally regarded as the best of his career. Often compared favorably with such writers as James Dickey, Robert Bly, and James Wright, Hall used simple, direct language to evoke surrealistic imagery. In addition to his poetry, Hall built a respected body of prose that includes essays, short fiction, plays, and children’s books. Hall, who lived on the New Hampshire farm he visited in summers as a boy, was also noted for the anthologies he has edited and is a popular teacher, speaker, and reader of his own poems.
Born in 1928, Hall grew up in Hamden, Connecticut. The Hall household was marked by a volatile father and a mother who was “steadier, maybe with more access to depths because there was less continual surface,” as Hall explained in an essay for Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series (CAAS). “To her I owe my fires, to my father my tears. I owe them both for their reading.” By age twelve, Hall had discovered the poet and short story writer Edgar Allan Poe: “I read Poe and my life changed,” he remarked in CAAS. Another strong influence in Hall’s early years was his maternal great-grandfather’s farm in New Hampshire, where he spent many summers. Decades later, he bought the same farm and settled there as a full-time writer and poet.
Hall attended Philips Exeter Academy and had his first poem published at age 16. He was a participant at the prestigious Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, where he met Robert Frost, that same year. From Exeter, Hall went to Harvard University, attending class alongside Adrienne Rich, Robert Bly, Frank O’Hara, and John Ashbery; he also studied for a year with Archibald MacLeish. Hall earned a BLitt from Oxford University and won the Newdigate contest for his poem “Exile,” one of the few Americans ever to win the prize. Returning to the United States, Hall spent a year at Stanford, studying under the poet-critic Yvor Winters, before returning to Harvard to join the prestigious Society of Fellows. It was there that Hall assembled Exiles and Marriages, a tightly-structured collection crafted in rigid rhyme and meter. In 1953, Hall also became the poetry editor of the Paris Review, a position he held until 1961. In 1957 he took a position as assistant professor of English at the University of Michigan, where he remained until 1975. While at Michigan, Hall met the young Jane Kenyon. They later married and, when Hall’s grandmother, who owned Eagle Pond Farm, passed away, bought the farm, left teaching, and moved there together. The collections Kicking the Leaves (1978) and The Happy Man (1986) reflect Hall’s happiness at his return to the family farm, a place rich with memories and links to his past. Many of the poems explore and celebrate the continuity between generations. The Happy Man won the Lenore Marshall/Nation Prize. Hall’s next book, The One Day (1988), won the National Book Critics Circle Award. A long poem that meditates on the on-set of old age, The One Day, like much of Hall’s early work, takes shape under formal pressure: composed of 110 stanzas, split over three sections, its final sections are written in blank verse. The critic Frederick Pollack praised the book as possibly “the last masterpiece of American Modernism. Any poet who seeks to surpass this genre should study it; any reader who has lost interest in contemporary poetry should read it.” Old and New Poems (1990) contains several traditional poems from earlier collections, as well as more innovative verses not previously published. “Baseball,” included in The Museum of Clear Ideas (1993), is the poet’s ode to the great American pastime and is structured around t
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
February 3, 2014
This is a wonderful collection of essays about Hall's life spent in the New Hampshire home where his grandmother was born; a home that has been in his family for over a century.
I always wanted to live in this house with the old people, and now I do, even though they are dead. I don't live in their past; they inhabit my present, where I live as I never lived before.
Hall, a Poet Laureate of the United States, writes eloquently about pride of place and things that are no longer there. He recalls fondly the days when people not only lived in the same town, but the same house their entire lives. From wood stoves to the change of seasons, he vividly brings to life a bygone way of living, while also providing commentary on the current ways we have of doing things.
Exhibiting some wicked good humor, he pokes fun of the yuppie-paradise Vermont has become, while cautioning against letting the "condosaurus" encroach into neighboring states.
In Vermont deer are required to have shots. In Vermont people keep flocks of spayed sheep to decorate their lawns. In Vermont when inchling trout are released into streams, a state law requires that they be preboned and stuffed with wild rice delicately flavored with garlic and thyme. In Vermont you can buy boots precaked with odorless manure. Taylor Rental outside Burlington hires Yankees out for parties, each guaranteed to know three hundred amusing rural anecdotes, all of them ending "You can't get there from here."
There is a fun discussion about the agony and the ecstasy of being the nation's first Presidential Primary. Even an essay about the Red Sox, something I have zero interest in, was made tolerable by Hall's beautiful writing.
This book has stirred up a strange mishmash of wistfulness and sadness in me. It's brought back some great memories and made me miss many people and ways of life that are gone for good, but it's also managed to make me happy to live in the now and to better appreciate everything I see out my window.
I used to survive, like many people, half in a daydream of future reward that is a confession of present malaise; the vacation trip, the miraculous encounter. When I moved here, at first I feared the fulfillment of desire, as if I would be punished for possessing what I wanted so much; there was a brief time when I drove ten miles under the speed limit and buckled up to move the car in the driveway; but contentment was relentless and would not let me go until I studied the rapture of the present tense. It turns out that the fulfillment of desire is to stop desiring, to live in the full moon and the snow, in the direction the wind comes from, in the animal scent of the alive second.
I always wanted to live in this house with the old people, and now I do, even though they are dead. I don't live in their past; they inhabit my present, where I live as I never lived before.
Hall, a Poet Laureate of the United States, writes eloquently about pride of place and things that are no longer there. He recalls fondly the days when people not only lived in the same town, but the same house their entire lives. From wood stoves to the change of seasons, he vividly brings to life a bygone way of living, while also providing commentary on the current ways we have of doing things.
Exhibiting some wicked good humor, he pokes fun of the yuppie-paradise Vermont has become, while cautioning against letting the "condosaurus" encroach into neighboring states.
In Vermont deer are required to have shots. In Vermont people keep flocks of spayed sheep to decorate their lawns. In Vermont when inchling trout are released into streams, a state law requires that they be preboned and stuffed with wild rice delicately flavored with garlic and thyme. In Vermont you can buy boots precaked with odorless manure. Taylor Rental outside Burlington hires Yankees out for parties, each guaranteed to know three hundred amusing rural anecdotes, all of them ending "You can't get there from here."
There is a fun discussion about the agony and the ecstasy of being the nation's first Presidential Primary. Even an essay about the Red Sox, something I have zero interest in, was made tolerable by Hall's beautiful writing.
This book has stirred up a strange mishmash of wistfulness and sadness in me. It's brought back some great memories and made me miss many people and ways of life that are gone for good, but it's also managed to make me happy to live in the now and to better appreciate everything I see out my window.
I used to survive, like many people, half in a daydream of future reward that is a confession of present malaise; the vacation trip, the miraculous encounter. When I moved here, at first I feared the fulfillment of desire, as if I would be punished for possessing what I wanted so much; there was a brief time when I drove ten miles under the speed limit and buckled up to move the car in the driveway; but contentment was relentless and would not let me go until I studied the rapture of the present tense. It turns out that the fulfillment of desire is to stop desiring, to live in the full moon and the snow, in the direction the wind comes from, in the animal scent of the alive second.
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February 6, 2026the essay reasons for hating vermont was certainly a highlight — never realized there was such animosity between vt & nh
October 23, 2018
Donald Hall at his rural New Hampshire curmudgeon best. I am not sure if this book would be for everyone--it is so centered on New Hampshire that if you are not from NH, you may not be able to relate to it at all--but I enjoyed it.
October 25, 2008
I come to this book not through Hall's poetry (I have purchased a volume of his wife Jane Kenyon's poetry), but through his memoir of writing, Life Work, and his children's book, The Ox-Cart Man (so beautifully illustrated by Barbara Cooney). This is a collection of short pieces about returning to live in the New Hampshire farmhouse of his ancestors. In some ways it is like Noel Perrin's series of books on rural life in Vermont, but the deeper personal and historical connections make the emotions stronger, as do Hall's strong attacks on development and the loss of small town life (and I am with Hall in the humorous piece included here entitled "Reasons for Hating Vermont."). These latter points sound more like Wendell Berry, but these magazine pieces and stories are more occasional work than the sustained essays of Berry. And they are often funny, inhabited by the eccentric characters of his past and those that still live in rural New Hampshire. The book is a perfect nightstand reader.
I love his discussion of almost two hundred years of furniture stored against the day in the attic of his family house. "With glue and dowels, the apartments of children and grandchildren could be filled for fifty years. In, and out again: the past hovering in the dusty present like motes, a future implicit in shadowy ranks of used things, usable again. We do not call these objects antiques; they were never removed from use as testimony to affluence. Twice a year, as I show somebody through the house, somebody decides that I am in need of counseling: "You've got a fortune here." I keep my temper. None of it would fetch a great price, but even if it would, I would as soon sell my ancestors' bones for soup as I would sell their top hats, chairs, tool chests, and pretty boxes.... This back chamber is like the parlor walls covered with family portraits, like the graveyard with its Vermont slate and New Hampshire granite; it keeps the dead." (10)
Towards the end of the same early and longer essay, "Keeping Things" he says:
"The steadiest presence remains in the possessions, rooms, and artifacts of the dead. Living in their house, we take over their practices and habits, which makes us feel close to them and to the years that they knew. I always wanted to live in this house with the old people, and now I do, even though they are dead. I don't live in their past; they inhabit my present, where I live as I never lived before. I used to survive, like many people, half in a daydream of future reward that is a confession of present malaise: the vacation trip, the miraculous encounter. When I moved here, at first I feared the fulfillment of desire, as if I would be punished for possessing what I wanted so much; there was a brief time when I drove ten miles under the speed limit and buckled up to move the car in the driveway; but contentment was relentless and would not let me go until I studied the rapture of the present tense. It turns out all fulfillment of desire is to stop desiring, to live in the full moon and the snow, in the direction the wind comes from, in the animal scent of the alive second." Here's hoping for more than survival, for that contentment that fulfills desire.
I love his discussion of almost two hundred years of furniture stored against the day in the attic of his family house. "With glue and dowels, the apartments of children and grandchildren could be filled for fifty years. In, and out again: the past hovering in the dusty present like motes, a future implicit in shadowy ranks of used things, usable again. We do not call these objects antiques; they were never removed from use as testimony to affluence. Twice a year, as I show somebody through the house, somebody decides that I am in need of counseling: "You've got a fortune here." I keep my temper. None of it would fetch a great price, but even if it would, I would as soon sell my ancestors' bones for soup as I would sell their top hats, chairs, tool chests, and pretty boxes.... This back chamber is like the parlor walls covered with family portraits, like the graveyard with its Vermont slate and New Hampshire granite; it keeps the dead." (10)
Towards the end of the same early and longer essay, "Keeping Things" he says:
"The steadiest presence remains in the possessions, rooms, and artifacts of the dead. Living in their house, we take over their practices and habits, which makes us feel close to them and to the years that they knew. I always wanted to live in this house with the old people, and now I do, even though they are dead. I don't live in their past; they inhabit my present, where I live as I never lived before. I used to survive, like many people, half in a daydream of future reward that is a confession of present malaise: the vacation trip, the miraculous encounter. When I moved here, at first I feared the fulfillment of desire, as if I would be punished for possessing what I wanted so much; there was a brief time when I drove ten miles under the speed limit and buckled up to move the car in the driveway; but contentment was relentless and would not let me go until I studied the rapture of the present tense. It turns out all fulfillment of desire is to stop desiring, to live in the full moon and the snow, in the direction the wind comes from, in the animal scent of the alive second." Here's hoping for more than survival, for that contentment that fulfills desire.
May 16, 2009
Another one that I read some time ago. No doubt that my love of New England and my deep fondness for Hall's home location -- Wilmot, NH -- play into my feelings. But this poet laureate's prose is rich and satisfying.
August 23, 2009
Another great Donald Hall read.
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July 17, 2010A slow resd but good. More meaningful I am sure if you have lived in New England for a long time or are a native.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews