Old and New Poems

Donald Hall has been writing poetry since he was twelve. This book collects between two covers his own selection of 179 poems, the best of his old and new work, excluding "The One Day, " the long poem that won him the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1989, and that numerous critics have hailed as his major work. "Old and New Poems" will elevate Hall's already sturdy position as one of our foremost poets. It also illustrated the inner drama of his poetic career, beginning with his early formalist poems and moving through a surrealist period and gradually toward the earthier, more passionate utterances of his very recent work. Some readers will see in "Old and New Poems" evidence of change; others, evidence of growing fidelity to a central aesthetic, a deeply held body of belief about the natural of poetry and society, and a joy in the permanence of the New Hampshire countryside where his family has lived for generations. A garland and a delight, "Old and New Poems" is a welcome edition to contemporary American poetry, for it restores to print a harvest of work, much of which has been unavailable.