From private writer to poet laureate
WILMOT, N.H. -- Smallness and quiet are the rule in this central pocket of New Hampshire -- the pastures, hills, ponds, herds, and weathered walls and fences -- and it has a timeless appearance. But in his great-grandfather's farmhouse, which looks just like the century-old photograph of it on the jacket of one of his books, poet Donald Hall is coping with the invasion of the outside world.
Hall this week was named poet laureate of the United States (officially: Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress) by James Billington, librarian of Congress. He succeeds Ted Kooser in October. It's a one-year appointment but sometimes is renewed.
At age 77, living what has been a well-filled but private literary life, Hall is a bit shocked at the intense national media attention to his appointment. ``I have been extremely surprised," he said while sitting in a blue wing chair in his sunny library. There were books everywhere, including on the floor by his chair, and his cat Thelma hung around warily.
``I didn't have any notion there would be such a burst of interviews," he said. ``I've had three photo sessions, and telephone interviews with the Times, Post, and the AP -- no, the AP came here. You see I really am a little flaky." After another call from the media during this interview, he took the phone off the hook yet still was interrupted by a delivery of flowers.
The poet laureate gets a $35,000 stipend and hands out two or more fellowships funded by the Witter Bynner Foundation. He or she gives an annual lecture and introduces poets in the Library of Congress poetry series. There are no other explicit duties, though recent laureates have inaugurated programs to advance the visibility of poetry. Joseph Brodsky campaigned for wider publication of inexpensive poetry editions, Robert Pinsky sponsored the ``Favorite Poem Project," and Rita Dove sponsored a program on poetry from the African diaspora. Hall said he hopes to promote poetry on radio or TV.
``I think he is a terrific choice," former laureate Billy Collins said by telephone. ``He is misapprehended by some as an elegiac poet or as a kind of semi-recluse -- most people know he lives on a farm in New Hampshire. But he is a cosmopolitan fellow, associated with many movements and figures in poetry. And he has the virtue of being a very American poet."
``He is one of those who has been a tiller in the fields for all these decades," said Chase Twichell, poet and editor of poetry publisher Ausable Press . ``He has the highest respect by everyone. I've never heard anything derogatory said about his poems by a poet, and that is rare."
Since 1955, Hall has published 15 books of poetry and more than 30 of prose. In April, Houghton Mifflin published his ``White Apples and the Taste of Stone," with 226 poems from 1946 to this year. For the past 31 years -- since he and his wife, the poet Jane Kenyon, moved back to this old house near Eagle Pond -- he has written in quiet and privacy, about ancestors, farm life, and more recently about his wrenching grief at Kenyon's death in 1995. He is also a dedicated Red Sox fan, and the team appeared in the poem ``Baseball," which has nine stanzas of nine lines each.
Born in Connecticut, Hall decided to become a poet when he was 14 and never changed his mind. In 1944 he was chosen a fellow -- at age 16, the youngest ever -- of the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, where he met Robert Frost. At Harvard, class of 1951, he was part of a brilliant circle: Robert Bly, John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, Kenneth Koch, Adrienne Rich. Then came Oxford for graduate work, where he met T.S. Eliot, who sagely advised him to buy long underwear. He hung out and drank with Dylan Thomas. In the 1960s, he published a memorable series of interviews in the Paris Review, with Eliot, Marianne Moore, and Ezra Pound.
Though startled at the attention directed at him, Hall is not surprised at public interest in poetry. It is, he said, ``a lot more present than people give it credit for. In my lifetime, I have seen increases in all the numbers: of poets, magazines, publishers, and books sold. When I was a kid, new books would routinely have printings of 1,000 copies, with no paperback s . Now a poet of moderate fame is likely to have a printing of 6,000 to 8,000. When I was in my 20s, there were very few poetry readings. Now there are more readings every year, and festivals, where you read poems under a tent to thousand s of people, with your face projected on a screen. It's like the circus!"
It's hard to a imagine a novelist laureate, or a playwright laureate, but people evidently like the idea of giving poetry an official advocate, as if it needs a periodic burst of endorsement. ``A lot of people like poetry and feel guilty at not reading it much, and they look for an opportunity to celebrate it," Hall said. The implication is that it's necessary for poetry to explain itself, plead for its right to exist, lest it slip into oblivion.
``Nobody asks a painter or musician, `Why should painting or music exist?' " Hall said. Nevertheless, he answered the question: ``It is beautiful. Because it is made of words, not pigment, people think it must say or do something, it ought to be practical or else it is pointless. But there is no other purpose than the beauty of it. And that is reason enough to be."
David Mehegan can be reached at mehegan@globe.com. 
