Review of Essays after Eighty by
How does a poet make a living? The simple question has a complex answer, or perhaps a variety of answers to illustrate the various and sometimes complex strategies poets have devised to provide the necessities of day to day life. Wallace Stevens and Ted Kooser sold insurance. Robert Frost went on the lecture circuit. Many poets have taught in schools and universities. At least one humorist has replied to the question with the quip, “They write fiction.” Despite the irony of the answer many have employed that very strategy.
One time Poet Laureate of the United States, Donald Hall, turned that last answer on its head. He wrote nonfiction. Hall left a teaching job at the University of Michigan and moved himself and wife Jane Kenyon to his family’s farm in New Hampshire. After this move he continued to write poetry, but supported himself through freelance writing. He wrote about baseball, particularly his beloved Boston Red Sox. He also wrote about art and artists and a variety of other topics.
Some of the topics addressed in the book also surface in his article for the November/December issue of Poets and Writers magazine. In that piece, he briefly spoke of poetry, ageing, and his own personal history. He spoke of selecting poems for his latest, and likely final book of poetry, a retrospective titled Selected Poems. He said “less is more,” and emphasized his belief that he only wanted the best of his work in this book, choosing quality rather than quantity.
The selection of poems for his last collection is not discussed in the book. On all other topics, I found the mere 136 pages in the book exhaustive after reading the brief treatment in the article. He speaks of the awards ceremonies he has attended and of receiving the National Medal of Arts at the White House. He speaks only briefly of his tenure as Poet Laureate of the United States, saying he was not a great Poet Laureate.
On a personal level, he speaks of his first marriage to Kirby Thompson Hall and of their children and grandchildren. He speaks of his marriage to Jane Kenyon and their critiques of each other’s poetry. He fought cancer and emerged victorious only to see Jane die of Leukemia. He speaks of finding love again in his later years. He reveals why he has stopped writing poetry.
Hall speaks of giving up driving, of loss of mobility, and of physical therapy as an octogenarian. He lives on the first floor of the old farm house, having suffered some loss of balance. He also uses a wheelchair when traveling away from the house.
In perhaps the most revealing portions of the book, Hall speaks of how the larger society regards and responds to elderly people. In one vignette, he describes a trip to the National Gallery of Art where he travels in his wheelchair and views various works. He and his friend Linda stop to admire a carving by the sculptor Henry Moore, and a museum guard kindly leans over the wheelchair to inform him of the sculptor’s name. He considers telling the guard of his friendship with Moore and informing him that he wrote a book about the sculptor. He decides that such a move would be self-serving and embarrassing to the guard.
One is tempted to regard this book as a memoir of a life well lived, but the story is neither continuous nor exhaustive. The units of the book are not chapters, but discrete stories, complete in and of themselves. The book is a great read.
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Ray Zimmerman has organized events and served as Master of Ceremonies at numerous venues. His photography, nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in regional and national publications. He has appeared as a storyteller and a performance poet at numerous Chattanooga area events. He is particularly pleased that his poem “Glen Falls Trail” received an award from the Tennessee Writers Alliance and appeared in The Southern Poetry Anthology: Volume VI, Tennessee (University of Texas Press).