100 Books - Essays After Eighty by Donald Hall

Here we go, One Hundred Books. This is a short list of 100 books I have read, listed here in no particular order.

Essays After Eighty by Donald Hall.

I first became aware of Donald Hall through one of his textbooks on writing many years ago. In the late 1970s, he was a much younger man. I still have the Writing Well, Third Edition textbook by Donald Hall, which was a significant help in finding my writer's voice. The marvelous thing about Essays After Eighty is hearing his unique voice through its pages. He provides the thoughts of a clear mind as he reflects on his life as a poet, writer, and human being of advanced years. His personal experiences intrigued me, and I often laughed out loud in reaction to his quirky thought turns. 

Excerpts from Essays After Eighty:

The greatest pleasure in writing is rewriting. My early drafts are always wretched. At first a general verb like "move" is qualified by the adverb "quickly." After sixty tries I come up with a particular, possibly witty verb and drop the adverb. Originally I wrote "poetry suddenly left me," which after twelve drafts became "poetry abandoned me" -- with another sentence to avoid self pity.

Revision takes time, a pleasing long process. Some of these essays took more than eighty drafts, some as few as thirty. Writing prose, I used to be a bit quicker. Maybe I discovered more things to be persnickety about. More likely age has slowed down my access to the right word. Because of multiple drafts I have been accused of self-discipline. Really I am self-indulgent, I cherish revising so much.

This short book was a joy to read. Now I want to look into some of his many other works. Sadly, he is gone now, but his words still live on.

Donald Hall served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2006 to 2007. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a recipient of the National Medal of Arts.