New England writer Donald Hall (born 1928) is a major poet in the lineage of Robert Frost. Memoirist, short story writer, essayist, dramatist, critic, and anthologist as well as poet, he is one of the most versatile and respected writers of his generation.

"In the history of literature," wrote Donald Hall in a prose work, "Poetry Notebook," published in the Seneca Review (1982), "most poets have been so saturated in their own literature that they have used it without knowing what they were doing." This he considered "The Tradition," providing "models of greatness that we have the temerity to take as measures for our endeavors." Expressing a very different view, poet Alice Notley claimed that "There's only one poetic tradition," and "the moment I enter this tradition or this history...its entire nature changes."

Notley and Hall are both prominent contemporary poets, but they exemplified radically opposite poetic styles, one...