New England - Regional Biography, Regional Studies - Northeast & Middle Atlantic U.S., New Hampshire - State & Local History, U.S. Poets - Literary Biography

Seasons at Eagle Pond

Name: Seasons at Eagle Pond
Author: Thomas W. Nason
ISBN: 9780899195421

by Thomas W. Nason

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Overview

A heartfelt celebration of the New England seasons in a charmingly illustrated, slipcased gift edition by New England's pre-eminent poet. Lyrical, comic and elegiac, it sings of a land and culture that is disappearing under the assault of change.

Hall's hymn to the splendors of the seasons mixes his vivid impressions of the rural New England landscape with reflections on the past and present.

About the Author, Thomas W. Nason

DONALD HALL, poet laureate of the United States from 2006 to 2007, is author of String Too Short to Be Saved and more than a dozen other works of prose and poetry. His many awards include the National Medal of Arts, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry, and the 1990 Frost Medal from the Poetry Society of America. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In celebration of New England and the seasons, the poet laureate of New Hampshire records his love of place. The place is a 180-year-old farmland, Eagle Pond, the home of Hall's grandparents and now his home. ``There's no reason to live here except for love,'' writes Hall as he describes the sight of huge Holsteins frolicking or, when impatient for the arrival of spring, he suggests pushing winter ``off to a condominium in the keys of Antarctica.'' This collection of four essays by a close observer of the natural world is a blend of reminiscences, anecdotes and vignettes that capture continuity of family and the quiet delights of rural life in each season. Hall is the author of String Too Short to Be Saved and Fathers Playing Catch With Sons. (November 3)

Library Journal

Hall gives us an intimate sketch of his beloved New Hampshire, where he summered with his grandparents at their homestead on Eagle Pond in Danbury: ``By the time I was sixteen I daydreamed of living here as a writer; in my twenties I learned that this was impractical; in my forties I did it.'' All four essays lucidly entwine Hall's past and present lives. Unfortunately, they are self-consciously nostalgic and therefore somewhat oppressive; perhaps because this was the season of Hall's childhood, ``Summer'' is the best realized. Still, this provides yet another backdrop against which we may examine Hall's poetry, his fiction, and his plays.Taryn Schaeneman, Kingsborough Community Coll., Brooklyn, N.Y.