On Eagle Pond

By Donald Hall

Book Overview

A life well-lived in rural New England, through the eyes of a master essayist and poet. This collection includes Donald Hall's Seasons at Eagle Pond, Here at Eagle Pond, the poem "Daylilies on the Hill," and many uncollected pieces. Here is Hall on letter writing, possessions, the past, wood stoves, the weather, the Boston Red Sox, satellite dishes, and much more from Eagle Pond Farm - his ancestral home in New Hampshire, where he visited his grandparents as a young boy. Throughout, Hall beautifully narrates the flow of one season into then next, taking the good with the bad and moving on, knowing that the cycle always begins again. Approaching all facets of life with a sense of simplicity and love, Hall distills the human experience with a sense of humor that readers will return to again and again, each time learning something new.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 156792560X
• ISBN13: 9781567925609
• Release Date: April 2016
• Publisher: David R. Godine Publisher
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

New Hampshire Exposed

When I was growing up in suburban New York, my parents sent me to a summer camp in rural New Hampshire for a number of summers. During these summers, I fell in love with the beauty and ruggedness of New Hampshire. I spent my summers riding horses, hiking mountains and swimming in ice cold lakes. I also spent my summers swatting mosquitoes and battling poison ivy. Donald Hall's anthology, Eagle Pond, brought back memories of these summers long gone, evoking memories both sweet and bitter-sweet. Hall's writing is lyrical and poetic, using words sparingly to evoke sounds, thoughts and memories. His commentary on the shallowness of our lives when they are based purely on the present and lack historical depth is right on target. I wish that I had read Hall's works separately. Unfortunately, they do not work too well together in anthology form. There is too much repetition, which sometimes gets annoying. This repetition is necessary if each volume stands alone, but it becomes redundant in anthology form. This does not decrease the beauty of the writing, but it does lessen the beauty of the book as a whole.