Essays After Eighty
HarperCollins · Print & ebook · November 3, 2015
A Essays pick for readers exploring Essays After Eighty.
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- Who it’s for
- Hall meets old age with frankness, sly humor, and a writer’s steady attention to the day.
- Themes
- Aging and mortality, Memory and life review, The writing life
- Pacing
- Reflective
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Start with this bookAbout this book
The former US Poet Laureate contemplates life, death, and the view from his window in these “alternately lyrical and laugh-out-loud funny” essays (New York Times). His entire life, Donald Hall dedicated himself to the written word, putting together a storied career as a poet, essayist, and memoirist. Here, in the “unknown, unanticipated galaxy” of very old age, his essays startle, move, and delight.
Continue reading
In Essays After Eighty, Hall ruminates on his past: “thirty was terrifying, forty I never noticed because I was drunk, fifty was best with a total change of life, sixty extended the bliss of fifty . . .” He also addresses his present: “When I turned eighty and rubbed testosterone on my chest, my beard roared like a lion and gained four inches.” Most memorably, Hall writes about his enduring love affair with his ancestral Eagle Pond Farm and with the writing life that sustains him every day: “Yesterday my first nap was at 9:30 a.m., but when I awoke I wrote again.” “Alluring, inspirational hominess . . . Essays After Eighty is a treasure . . . balancing frankness about losses with humor and gratitude.”—Washington Post “A fine book of remembering all sorts of things past, Essays After Eighty is to be treasured.”—Boston Globe
Age, wit, and work
Hall meets old age with frankness, sly humor, and a writer’s steady attention to the day.
Come here for
- Wry reflections on aging, memory, and mortality
- A lasting attachment to home and the writing life
Expect
- Essays that balance loss with humor and gratitude
- A voice both lyrical and laugh-out-loud funny
Where it sits
| Essay Collections | 99% |
|---|---|
| Poetry | 26% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- Essay Collections
- Letters & Correspondence
- Medieval Collections
- Speeches Collection
Show all 8 publisher categories
- Poetry Anthologies
- Poetry - General Themes
- Love Poetry
- Nature Poetry
- Authors
- Donald Hall
- Publisher
- HarperCollins
- Published
- November 3, 2015
- Format
- Print & ebook
- Theme
- Aging and mortality · Memory and life review · The writing life
- Reading lane
- Essay Collections