In my life, I’ve seen enormous increase in the consumption of poetry. When I was young, there were virtually no poetry readings. – Donald Hall
When I lament and darken over my diminishments, I accomplish nothing. It’s better to sit at the window all day, pleased to watch birds, barns, and flowers. – Donald Hall
Each season, my balance gets worse, and sometimes I fall. I no longer cook for myself but microwave widower food, mostly Stouffer’s. My fingers are clumsy and slow with buttons. – Donald Hall
When I finished my initial year at Oxford, I flew home to marry Kirby, who had been my girlfriend in college. We had met on a blind date. – Donald Hall
My parents were willing to let me follow my nose, do what I wanted to do, and they supported my interest by buying the books that I wanted for birthdays and Christmas, almost always poetry books. – Donald Hall
A fellowship to Oxford acquainted me with the depths of English cooking. By the twenty-first century, London’s best restaurants are as good as Paris’s, but not in the 1950s. – Donald Hall
It used to be that one poet in each generation performed poems in public. In the twenties, it was Vachel Lindsay, who sometimes dropped to his knees in the middle of a poem. Then Robert Frost took over, and made his living largely on the road. – Donald Hall
I’m happy to feed the squirrels – tree rats with the agility of point guards – but in fair weather, they frighten my finches. They leap from snowbank to porch to feeder and stuff their cheek pouches with chickadee feed. – Donald Hall
Many times I have written something, and after it was published, I understood what I was saying. – Donald Hall
In 1975, I quit my tenure, and we moved from Ann Arbor to New Hampshire. It was daunting to pay for groceries and the mortgage by freelance writing – but it worked, and I loved doing it. – Donald Hall
When I was a child, I loved old people. My New Hampshire grandfather was my model human being. – Donald Hall
In 1952, I recited aloud for the first time, booming in Oxford’s Sheldonian Theatre from a bad poem that had won a prize. I was twenty-three. – Donald Hall
I loathe the trivialization of poetry that happens in creative writing classes. Teachers set exercises to stimulate subject matter: Write a poem about an imaginary landscape with real people in it. Write about a place your parents lived in before you were born. We have enough terrible poetry around without encouraging more of it. – Donald Hall
In December of 1952, my first wife, Kirby, and I left Vienna to drive through the Russian sector of Austria into Yugoslavia. – Donald Hall
Some days I feel good about my work, and sometimes I feel I’ve never written anything worthwhile. That’s par for the course. – Donald Hall
I have seen so many poets who were famous, who won all sorts of prizes, disappear with their death. I write as good as I can and don’t try to turn that into some hope for a future that I could never know. – Donald Hall
I felt the need to be more open and expressive of my feelings, not just about the hills and the countryside, but about the daily life. – Donald Hall
Obviously, death is ahead of me. I don’t look forward to dying one little bit. But, you know, I simply don’t worry about it because it’s going to happen to me as it does to anybody. – Donald Hall
Sound had always been my portal to poetry, but in the beginning, sound was imagined through the eye. – Donald Hall
