Our New Laureate

New Hampshire poet Donald Hall named new poet laureate

By Beverley Wang, Associated Press Writer | June 14, 2006

WILMOT, N.H. --A fax last week informed Donald Hall he would be the next poet laureate of the United States, and since then, between phone calls, sitting for photographs and giving interviews, he has been thinking about his new job.

"I had one friend, I asked him to give me ideas for what I can do as poet laureate, and he typed out 85," said Hall, a former New Hampshire poet laureate.

Maxine Kumin, a friend and former state and national poet laureate from Warner, founded a women's poetry series. Ted Kooser, the current poet laureate, has a weekly newspaper column, "American Life in Poetry."

In the living room of his farmhouse Tuesday, Hall wondered whether he could persuade a cable television network to run an occasional program of poetry, or convince satellite radio to create a poetry-only channel.

"I think most of the things I think about are unrealistic because they would take a great wad of cash to get started," he said. But you never know. "I can ask," he said, smiling.

Hall, 77, will assume his duties this fall. Poet laureates receive $35,000 for the year as well as a travel allowance.

The Library of Congress says it tries to keep official duties of its poet laureates to a minimum so they can work on their own projects.

Hall is to speak at the library's National Book Festival on Sept. 30 in Washington and to open the library's annual literary series in October with a reading of his work.

"Donald Hall is one of America's most distinctive and respected literary figures," Librarian of Congress James Billington said in an announcement prepared for delivery Wednesday. "For more than 50 years, he has written beautiful poetry on a wide variety of subjects that are often distinctly American and conveyed with passion."

At 12, Hall wrote his first poem, an overwrought piece about death. Two years later, he declared his ambition to become a poet.

"When I was 14, I decided that's what I wanted to do with my whole life, and that's what I've done."

"It was because of the love of the art that I began to write at all, not because I had something to say, but because I loved the art of poetry."

His poems, chronicling seven decades of life, are rich with New Hampshire's rural landscape, in particular Eagle Pond Farm, where Hall's grandmother and mother were born and where he spent his boyhood summers before moving there permanently 30 years ago. He was born in New Haven, Conn.

I have most of his books and look forward to his appearance here at the National Festival of the Book this fall. His voice is distinctive, the style is comfortingly New England. Go to the library and pick up a copy of "String Too Short to be Saved" and recall a simpler time peopled by a pre-microwave generation.