Eagle Pond: An Essay Collection from the Acclaimed U.S. Poet Laureate

This original paperback brings together for the first time all of Donald Hall’s writing on Eagle Pond Farm, his ancestral home in New Hampshire, where he visited his grandparents as a young boy and then lived with his wife, the poet Jane Kenyon, until her death. It includes the entire, previously published Seasons at Eagle Pond and Here at Eagle Pond; the poem “Daylilies on the Hill” from The Painted Bed; and several uncollected pieces. In these tender essays, Hall tells of the joys and quiddities of life on the farm, the pleasures and discomforts of a world in which the year has four seasons -- maple sugar, blackfly, Red Sox, and winter. Lyrical, comic, and elegaic, they sing of a landscape and culture that are disappearing under the assault of change.

In prose as clear as pond ice and as warm as a Glenwood stove, this landmark collection reveals:

Four Seasons on the Farm: Not just spring, summer, fall, and winter, but the true New England calendar of maple sugar, blackfly, Red Sox, and the long, deep quiet of the cold. An Ancestral Home: The story of a place bought in 1865, where generations of a family lived, worked, and left their mark, from forgotten tools in the back chamber to the poet’s own rekindled fire. A Poet’s Prose: Lyrical, comic, and elegiac essays that capture the small moments and deep truths of a life lived in observance of the land and its history. Life with Jane Kenyon: A tender, unsentimental portrait of a shared life of work, love, and poetry on the farm Hall and his wife, the poet Jane Kenyon, called home.