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A Memoir of a Life in Poetry
Houghton Mifflin
September 2008
On Sale: September 2, 2008
208 pages
ISBN: 0618990658
EAN: 9780618990658
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Memoir
Donald Hall's remarkable life in poetry — a career capped by
his appointment as U.S. poet laureate in 2006 — comes alive
in this richly detailed, self-revealing memoir. Hall's invaluable record of the making of a poet begins with
his childhood in Depression-era suburban Connecticut, where
he first realized poetry was "secret, dangerous, wicked, and
delicious," and ends with what he calls "the planet of
antiquity," a time of life dramatically punctuated by his
appointment as poet laureate of the United States. Hall writes eloquently of the poetry and books that moved
and formed him as a child and young man, and of adolescent
efforts at poetry writing — an endeavor he wryly describes
as more hormonal than artistic. His painful formative days
at Exeter, where he was sent like a naive lamb to a high
WASP academic slaughter, are followed by a poetic
self-liberation of sorts at Harvard. Here he rubs elbows
with Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery, and Edward Gorey, and
begins lifelong friendships with Robert Bly, Adrienne Rich,
and George Plimpton. After Harvard, Hall is off to Oxford,
where the high spirits and rampant poetry careerism of the
postwar university scene are brilliantly captured. At eighty, Hall is as painstakingly honest about his
failures and low points as a poet, writer, lover, and father
as he is about his successes, making Unpacking the Boxes —
his first book since being named poet laureate — both
revelatory and tremendously poignant.
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