Donald Hall died two days ago. Back in 1988 I reviewed The One Day for the Washington Post. It may be Don’s finest book of poems and it pleased me enormously when we awarded it the NBCC prize in poetry. He deserved greater recognition than he got for his many contributions to the literary culture. In addition to all his other accomplishments, and there are many, Don (shown here with Jane Kenyon, his wife, in 1993) served as the guest editor of The Best American Poetry 1989, the second volume in this series. He was a friend and mentor, and his ideas and methods, based on years of experience as an anthologist, proved invaluable to me in subsequent years. In Dana Gioia’s words, “Few people did as much for American poetry as Don did. He lived the idea of championing the ‘best American poetry’ long before the anthology emerged.”
Defying medical prognostication he lived to be 89 and never ceased to produce fine work -- his octogenarian essays are terrific. Last year on Don’s birthday, the Oxford University Press’s blog reposted a piece I’d written when Don was named Poet Laureate of the United States. This is what I wrote:
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Donald Hall is a wonderful choice for US Poet Laureate. I’ve worked closely with him on such projects as “The Best American Poetry 1989,” and in 1994 he asked me to succeed him as general editor of the University of Michigan Press’s “Poets on Poetry” series. So I feel a special kinship with him. But there are many poets and other writers out there who feel a similar bond with Don Hall, for he has always been a generous mentor and an exemplary figure, proving (for example) that an outstanding poet can also do admirable work as an editor, an anthologist, a writer of children’s verse, a sports writer, a writer of short stories and of textbooks. In his versatility and with his energy, Donald Hall has always demonstrated the value of hard work in one’s poetic practice. The title of one of his prose books, Life Work, sums up the almost moral imperative that work represents for Hall. Reviewing his book “The One Day” in The Washington Post in 1988, I called it “loud, sweeping, multitudinous, an act of the imperial imagination,” and cited a climactic line suggestive of Hall’s fundamental take on life: “Work, love, build a house and die. But build a house.”
The contributor’s note indicated that as “the editor of the Oxford Book of American Poetry, which was published this spring [ie. 2006],” I included “The Impossible Marriage” and four other poems by Donald Hall.
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I like “noble” as the adjective to associate with Donald Hall's life work.
– DL, June 25, 2018
See http://www.impurities.xyz/david-lehman-on-donald-hall-oupblog/
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