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U.S. Poet Laureate to Visit HSU

• By Dave Coffield
• Posted February 2, 2007 9:29 AM
• 0 Comments

The 14th, and current, Poet Laureate of the United States, Donald Hall visits the Hardin-Simmons University campus as the featured author in the Lawrence Clayton Poets and Writers Speaker Series 19 Feb in the Johnson Building multipurpose room. Hall will hold an informal question and answer session at 4:00 p.m., followed at 8:00 p.m. by readings from his works, a reception, and book signing.

Donald Hall

The Lawrence Clayton Poets and Writers Speaker Series was established in honor of former HSU faculty member Dr. Lawrence Clayton, whose passion was the folklore, folk-life, and literature of the American West and Southwest.

The Library of Congress, which selects the laureate, deliberately avoids attaching specific duties to the post so that the poet can do his or her own writing. But in recent years, holders of the title have used the platform to enlarge the presence of poetry in the culture. Mr. Hall said that he would like to follow in the tradition of predecessors who have tried to expand poetry's reach.

Dana Gioia, himself a poet and chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, characterized Hall’s selection as “long-overdue recognition for one of America’s greatest and most-admired men of letters."

Hall was born in Connecticut in 1928. He was educated at Harvard, Oxford and Stanford universities and taught at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. For the past 30 years he has lived on an old family farm in rural New Hampshire, in the house where his grandmother and his mother were born. He has two children and five grandchildren.

Hall has published 15 books of poetry, beginning with “Exiles and Marriages� in 1955. Earlier this year, he brought out “White Apples and the Taste of Stone� (Houghton Mifflin), a selection of poems 1946-2006. In 2005 he published “The Best Day The Worst Day,� a memoir of his marriage to the poet Jane Kenyon, who died in 1995. Among his children’s books, “Ox-Cart Man� won the Caldecott Medal. Among his many books of prose are his essays on poetry, “Breakfast Served Any Time All Day� (2003).
For his poems he has received the Lenore Marshall/Nation Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the Ruth Lilly Prize for Poetry. He has also received two fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation. He is a member of the Academy of Arts and Letters.

Funding for Donald Hall’s appearance has been generously provided by Mr. James M.
Parker in memory of his wife Cynthia Ann Parker. Hall’s books may be purchased from the Hardin-Simmons University Bookstore, at the question & answer session, and the poetry reading. For further information, contact Dr. Robert A. Fink (325) 670-1214, Hardin-Simmons University Department of Literature and Languages.