Life Work
Published on 15. April 2003
Book
Paperback/Softback
136 pages
978-0-8070-7133-5 (ISBN)
Description
The distinguished poet on the meaning of work, solitude, and love in this "extraordinary nobility and wisdom" (The New York Times)
When Donald Hall moved to his grandparents' New Hampshire farm in 1975, his work as a writer and a life devoted to the liteary arts must have seemed remote from the harsh physical labor of his ancestors. However, he reveals a similar kind of artistry in the lives of his grandparents, Kate and Wesley. From them he learned that the devotion to craft-be it canning vegetables, writing poems, or carting manure-creates its own special discipline and an "absorbedness" that no wage can compensate.
In this "sustained meditation on work as the key to personal happiness" (Los Angeles Times), we see how the writer has modeled his own life on his family's lives of work, solitude, and love. When Hall comes face to face with his own mortality halfway through writing this book, we understand both his obsession with work and its ultimate consolation.
When Donald Hall moved to his grandparents' New Hampshire farm in 1975, his work as a writer and a life devoted to the liteary arts must have seemed remote from the harsh physical labor of his ancestors. However, he reveals a similar kind of artistry in the lives of his grandparents, Kate and Wesley. From them he learned that the devotion to craft-be it canning vegetables, writing poems, or carting manure-creates its own special discipline and an "absorbedness" that no wage can compensate.
In this "sustained meditation on work as the key to personal happiness" (Los Angeles Times), we see how the writer has modeled his own life on his family's lives of work, solitude, and love. When Hall comes face to face with his own mortality halfway through writing this book, we understand both his obsession with work and its ultimate consolation.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Boston, MA
United States
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 218 mm
Width: 140 mm
Thickness: 11 mm
Weight
177 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8070-7133-5 (9780807071335)
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Person
Donald Hall (1928–2018) was the author of many volumes of poetry spanning forty years, including The One Day, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, essays, children’s books, and criticism. In 2006, he was appointed as the Library of Congress’ 14th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. Hall passed away at the age of 89 in 2018.