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.
