Description

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.

This beloved collection captures the heart of that vanishing world:

The Four Seasons of a Farm: Experience a year where the seasons are not spring or fall, but maple sugar, blackfly, Red Sox, and the long, deep quiet of a New Hampshire winter. An Ancestral Home: Step into the New England farmhouse where Hall’s grandparents lived and where he and his wife, the poet Jane Kenyon, made their life together. Poetic Prose: A collection of lyrical, comic, and elegaic essays from one of America’s most cherished poets, observing a world disappearing under the assault of change. A Disappearing Way of Life: Witness the joys and hardships of country life, from haying in summer to the solitary comfort of a winter woodstove, chronicled with love and unsentimental clarity.