Here at Eagle Pond FROM THE PUBLISHER
In these tender essays, Donald Hall tells of the joys and quiddities of life on the ancestral New Hampshire place formerly worked as a dairy farm by his grandparents, where he spent time as a child and returned to live with his wife, Jane Kenyon, at the age of forty-six. He tells of the comforts and discomforts of a world in which the year has four seasons -- maple sugar, blackfly, Red Sox, and winter. These essays are also Hall's answers to such questions as "What would our lives be like, living here ... in solitude among relics and memories?" And they are ghost stories as well: vivid descriptions of Hall's intimate connection to the land, his family's past, and his coming home to language.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
A companion to Seasons at Eagle Pond , these witty and perceptive essays capture the essence of New England, past and present. From his ancestral home in Wilmot, N.H., poet Hall reminisces about his childhood, family history and the pleasures of country life. In ``Rusticus'' he discusses rural culture and its independence, conservatism and sense of continuity. How do New Hampshire citizens feel about their presidential primary? See ``Living Room Politics.'' Hall takes jabs at neighboring Vermont; he ruminates on the weather--the seasons are maple sugar, blackfly, Red Sox and winter--and draws a composite picture of the countryfolk. Hall is to New Hampshire what John Gould is to Maine. (Nov.)
Library Journal
As an advocate for rural New England life, Hall has no equal. In this collection of essays, a successor to Seasons at Eagle Pond ( LJ 12/87), the prize-winning poet and one-time poet laureate of New Hampshire laments the encroachment of suburbia, the coming of the ``condosaurus,'' and the influx of senior citizens into his home state. Ranging in subject matter from the joy of the woodburning cookstove to the rural American to the New Hampshire political system, Hall writes with grace and humor, capturing the spirit of those who make ``Live Free or Die'' their motto. Recommended for all who love New England and enjoy skillful writing.-- Nancy R. Ives, SUNY at Geneseo