Donald Hall was born on 20 September 1928 in Hamden, Connecticut. 20 September 2026 marks 98 years since the birth of the American poet and essayist. His work followed rural life, labour, ageing, love and loss. He died in 2018 in Wilmot, New Hampshire.

He published poetry collections, essays, memoirs and children’s books. The One Day won major American prizes; Without appeared after the death of his wife, the poet Jane Kenyon, in 1995. His style combined everyday language with formal discipline. Copyrighted poems are not reproduced here.

Life at Eagle Pond Farm in New Hampshire became the recurring landscape of his writing. Kenyon’s work remains distinct. Hall served as poet laureate of New Hampshire and then, in 2006–2007, as the 14th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry at the Library of Congress. The federal post should not be confused with other honorary titles.

In 2010 he received the National Medal of Arts. He continued writing about old age and the author’s trade almost to the end. The anniversary can introduce Romanian readers to a major postwar American poetic voice without a dossier of long quotations.

The medal-ceremony photograph is a document of public recognition, not a youthful studio portrait. The credit should name the event, not imply a literary autograph.

Hall wrote about time passing at a farm, not the myth of the isolated poet. The commemoration belongs to books, the farm and a short Washington term, not to poems copied in full.

Image: Medill DC / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0. Donald Hall receiving the National Medal of Arts. Public-ceremony photograph, not a literary autograph. Cropped to 16:9.

Source consulted: Donald Hall | Academy of American Poets; Donald Hall | Poetry Foundation; Donald Hall | Library of Congress.