Hall, Donald, — The Old Life.

Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1996. First Printing. VG in VG DJ. For nearly 50 years, Donald Hall has stood in the front rank of American poets. In his 12th book of poems, the Old Life is a. long autobiographical sequence preceded by two substantial poems: "The Night of the Day" and his "Old and New Poems" a long autobiogrpahical sequence preceded by two substantial poems "The Night of the Day and New Poems." The book concludes with the book "Without" on commemorating the illness of his adored wife, the poet Jane Kenyon. Jane Kenyon who died in 1995 The title sequence takes Hall from his boyhood in New Haven with summers in New Hampshire to his education at Harvard and Oxford to his growing acquaintance with poetslike Robert Frost and contemporaries like Robert Bly. It sees him growiing into manhood, father hood, and grandefatherhood and a happy second mariage. He continues to inhabit their old farmhouse, occupied by his family for generations.