{"id":2796,"date":"2016-09-20T13:53:23","date_gmt":"2016-09-20T18:53:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/president\/?p=2796"},"modified":"2018-08-09T13:22:19","modified_gmt":"2018-08-09T18:22:19","slug":"essays-after-eighty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/president\/2016\/09\/20\/essays-after-eighty\/","title":{"rendered":"Essays After Eighty"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Donald Hall
\nHoughton Mifflin 2014<\/h2>\n

Highly recommended<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"This slim volume of 134 pages comprises essays written by the American poet Donald Hall, now in his late eighty years and no longer writing poetry.\u00a0 Hall has been a fixture on the American poetry scene for many years (catch up on his career by watching Bill Moyers interview\u00a0Hall and his wife Jane Kenyon<\/a>, also a highly regarded poet).\u00a0 For a sample of his poetry, from among many fine poems, I recommend \u201cMy Son My Executioner<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first essay in this collection, \u201cOut the Window,\u201d is the best. Hall moved in mid-life to his ancestral farmhouse in New Hampshire, giving up a tenured position at the University of Michigan to live on his own terms as a free-lance writer (\u201ca Volvo is a Subaru with Tenure\u201d). It combines reflections on growing old with a movingly described relationship with place. There are also sharply worded and insightful essays in this collection on good writing, on smoking, on fame, on rejection, and finally on finding peace.<\/p>\n

One effect of this volume will be to encourage you to read more poetry.<\/p>\n

Back to the Bookshelf<\/a><\/em><\/h2>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Donald Hall Houghton Mifflin 2014 Highly recommended This slim volume of 134 pages comprises essays written by the American poet Donald Hall, now in his late eighty years and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":126,"featured_media":3230,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pdas-bookshelf"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/president\/files\/2016\/09\/essays-after-eighty-43.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/126"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2796"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3231,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2796\/revisions\/3231"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}