- Paperback: 136 pages
- Publisher: Beacon Press; Revised edition (April 15 2003)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0807071331
- ISBN-13: 978-0807071335
- Product Dimensions: 14 x 0.5 x 21.6 cm
- Shipping Weight: 177 g
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,575,368 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Library Journal
Trust a poet to write a memoir that is not a memoir but a series of reflections organized around a theme--in this case, the pleasures of work. Hall, a winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and author most recently of The Museum of Clear Ideas ( LJ 2/1/93), opens by making a distinction between jobs, chores, and work. He then explains himself by detailing the dedicated lives of his sturdy New England ancestors, his decision to leave the security of teaching for full-time writing, and his struggle with recurrent cancer--most annoying because it keeps him from the "absorbedness" that working on a poem allows. Along the way, we learn something of the poet's creative processes, which are nourished by a disciplined and almost overfull work schedule. Hall writes cleanly, crisply, and with a gentle conviction that will push readers out of their easy chairs and set them to working, too. He inspires such absorbedness that the task of reading is done in an instant. Highly recommended.
- Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
- Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Kirkus Reviews
From well-known poet and memoirist Hall (Their Ancient Glittering Eyes, 1992, etc.), a meditation-memoir on the theme of work that becomes something much more when, midway through the writing, the author learns he has cancer. At 63, Hall is mightily productive in poetry, memoir, essay, letter, story, and review, and he sets out to devote part of each working day (for Hall, there are seven of these a week) to writing this book, its title bespeaking its theme. In 1975, we learn, Hall gave up teaching and became a full-time writer, retiring to the farm in Vermont that had once belonged to his grandparents. As the book begins, Hall mourns the recent death of a close friend, preacher, and hard worker; settles on a definition of productive work as a state of ``absorbedness''; touches on history, family, his own literary output, his great love of the work he does, the number of revisions he puts poems through, what time he gets up, what he eats for breakfast and lunch, even when he walks the dog and drops manuscripts off with the typist. A phone call changes the tone of all of this when a routine blood test shows a recurrence of cancer and sends the poet into surgery. A couple of weeks later, facing both chemotherapy and newly diminished odds for living more than another few years, Hall picks up his narrative and--keeps going. Under the deepened shadow of mortality, he writes with eloquent simplicity about the old-fashioned working farm-life of his Vermont grandparents, the declining health of his aging mother, and--with a consummate and moving poise--his father's unhappiness in his own work, and his early death from cancer. History, life, work, art, dedication, love, and courage--all without becoming saccharine or smug or maudlin, in a treasurable small book, poetic in its plainness, about how to live well. (First printing of 25,000) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hall's best book,
By
This review is from: Life Work (Paperback)
I am a big fan of Donald Hall's writing, both poetry and prose. This is my favorite and the one that made me think the most. It allows one to put one's life in perspective, realize the importance of life and work. We all aren't as lucky as Hall has been to work at what we love, but the book makes you think about how work can become more worthwhile. Deep and enjoyable.
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Sense of Time, Place and Self,
By
This review is from: Life Work (Paperback)
Reading this book is work -- in the Donald Hall definition, for to read it is to become absorbed in each word to the exclusion of all else. Hall writes of his ancestors, of the rocky farms of New England, a small dairy, his father's early death, his wife's gardening, and then quite suddenly as his colon cancer recurs, of the possible end to life and the very prosaic tasks of cancelling readings, putting papers in order for survivors. Throughout, he achieves a sense of time, place and self which crosses generations. He charts both the constants and the increasing changes of the farm which has been in his family for more than a hundred years and the country around it. Hall, like God, love and grace--all of which are found in abundance in this book, abides.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.9 out of 5 stars (8 customer reviews) 16 of 16 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hall's best book,
By Kenneth French - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Life Work (Paperback)
I am a big fan of Donald Hall's writing, both poetry and prose. This is my favorite and the one that made me think the most. It allows one to put one's life in perspective, realize the importance of life and work. We all aren't as lucky as Hall has been to work at what we love, but the book makes you think about how work can become more worthwhile. Deep and enjoyable.
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Sense of Time, Place and Self,
By James Carragher - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Life Work (Paperback)
Reading this book is work -- in the Donald Hall definition, for to read it is to become absorbed in each word to the exclusion of all else. Hall writes of his ancestors, of the rocky farms of New England, a small dairy, his father's early death, his wife's gardening, and then quite suddenly as his colon cancer recurs, of the possible end to life and the very prosaic tasks of cancelling readings, putting papers in order for survivors. Throughout, he achieves a sense of time, place and self which crosses generations. He charts both the constants and the increasing changes of the farm which has been in his family for more than a hundred years and the country around it. Hall, like God, love and grace--all of which are found in abundance in this book, abides.
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Donald Hall's book is poetry at work, and working poetry.,
By A Customer - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Life Work (Paperback)
Poet Donald Hall somehow manages to talk about the craft of writing and, even in prose, wondrously shapes a poetic work. This book is an excellent depiction of the author's life, as well as a fascinating historical account of Hall's life and background. Contrary to the popular romanticized view of writing or the "anyone can do it" mentality, Hall shows the reader just what his writing has entailed, and it is clearly WORK
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