Carnival of Losses A

<p><strong>Former poet laureate of the United States Donald Hall's final collection of essays from the vantage point of very old age once again "alternately lyrical and laugh-out-loud funny."*</strong><br />*(<em>New York Times</em>)<br /><br />"Why should a nonagenarian hold anything back?" Donald Hall answers his own question in these self-knowing fierce and funny essays on aging the pleasures of solitude and the sometimes astonishing freedoms arising from both.<br />Nearing ninety at the time of writing he intersperses memories of exuberant days in his youth with uncensored tales of literary friendships spanning decades--with James Wright Richard Wilbur Seamus Heaney and other luminaries.<br />Cementing his place alongside Roger Angell and Joan Didion as a generous and profound chronicler of loss this final work is as original and searing as anything Hall wrote during his extraordinary literary lifetime.</p>