Essays After Eighty

The former US Poet Laureate contemplates life, death, and the view from his window in these alternately lyrical and laugh-out-loud funny essays (New York Times).

His entire life, Donald Hall dedicated himself to the written word, putting together a storied career as a poet, essayist, and memoirist. Here, in the unknown, unanticipated galaxy of very old age, his essays startle, move, and delight.

In Essays After Eighty, Hall ruminates on his past: thirty was terrifying, forty I never noticed because I was drunk, fifty was best with a total change of life, sixty extended the bliss of fifty … He also addresses his present: When I turned eighty and rubbed testosterone on my chest, my beard roared like a lion and gained four inches.

Most memorably, Hall writes about his enduring love affair with his ancestral Eagle Pond Farm and with the writing life that sustains him every day: Yesterday my first nap was at 9:30 a.m., but when I awoke I wrote again.

Alluring, inspirational hominess … Essays After Eighty is a treasure … balancing frankness about losses with humor and gratitude. -Washington Post

A fine book of remembering all sorts of things past, Essays After Eighty is to be treasured. -Boston Globe