SOURCE: “Donald Hall: Elegies from Eagle Pond,” in Publishers Weekly, Vol. 245, No. 12, March 23, 1998, pp. 72–73.

In the following interview, Hall discusses the death of his wife (poet Jane Kenyon), his editing of her last collection of poetry, and Without, his own poetry collection about their life together.

Eagle Pond Farm is familiar to even the casual reader of Donald Hall. The weather-beaten spread, hard by Route 4 at the foot of Ragged Mountain in Wilmot, N.H., has been home to Hall's maternal clan since 1865. It is the subject or setting of many of his poems and essays, providing a consistent reference point for more than 40 years of work. It is the place where Hall spent summers growing up, returning for good in 1975 after remarrying and giving up tenure at the University of Michigan to write full-time. And it is the house where his wife, the poet Jane Kenyon, died...