Donald Hall was not only one of America’s poet laureates but one of the great personal essayists. “If any American writer deserves the description of ‘man of letters,’” the New York Times Book Review wrote, “it is Donald Hall.” Mr. Hall approached writing as he approached life—with simplicity, affection, and a wry wit. He distilled the human experience with a sense of humor that readers will return to again and again, each time learning something new. His work glows with the affection he held for the land, the people, and the customs of rural New England, and especially for the small, New Hampshire dairy farm near Ragged Mountain he visited every summer as a child.

Donald Hall was not only one of America’s poet laureates but one of the great personal essayists. “If any American writer deserves the description of ‘man of letters,’” the New York Times Book Review wrote, “it is Donald Hall.” Mr. Hall approached writing as he approached life—with simplicity, affection, and a wry wit. He distilled the human experience with a sense of humor that readers will return to again and again, each time learning something new. His work glows with the affection he held for the land, the people, and the customs of rural New England, and especially for the small, New Hampshire dairy farm near Ragged Mountain he visited every summer as a child.