Donald Hall's celebrated book of poems "Without" was written for his wife, Jane Kenyon, who died in 1995, Hall returns to this powerful territory in "The Best Day The Worst Day", a work of prose that is equally "a work of art, love and generous genius." (Boston Globe) Jane Kenyon was nineteen years younger than Donald Hall and a student poet at the University of Michigan when they met. Hall was her teacher. This book is an intimate record of their twenty-three year marriage at Eagle Pond Farm - of their shared rituals of writing, close attention to pets and gardening, and love in the afternoon. Hall joyfully records Jane Kenyon's growing power as a poet and the couple's careful accomodations toward each other as writers. This portrait of the inner moods of "the best marriage I know about" as Hall has written, is laid against the stark medical emergency of Jane's leukemia, which ended her life in fifteen months. Hall shares with readers - as if we were one of the grieving neighbours, friends and relatives - the daily ordeal of Jane's dying, through heart-breaking and generous storytelling.
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