Essays After Eighty

<p><strong>"Alternately lyrical and laugh-out-loud funny."--<em>New York Times</em><br /><br />"Deliciously readable . . . Donald Hall if abandoned by the muse of poetry has wrought his prose to a keen autumnal edge." <em>-- Wall Street Journal</em></strong><br /><br />His entire life Donald Hall has dedicated himself to the written word putting together a storied career as a poet essayist and memoirist. Now in the "unknown unanticipated galaxy" of very old age he is writing essays that startle move and delight. In <em>Essays After Eighty </em>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."<br /><br /><strong>"Alluring inspirational hominess . . . <em>Essays After Eighty</em> is a treasure . . . balancing frankness about losses with humor and gratitude." <em>-- Washington Post</em><br /><br />"A fine book of remembering all sorts of things past <em>Essays After Eighty </em>is to be treasured." -- <em>Boston Globe</em></strong></p>