In the fifties, no one wore beards. In Eisenhower’s day, as in the time of the Founding Fathers, all chins were smooth, while during the Civil War, beards were as common as sepsis. Donald Hall Read Quote
I’m happy to feed the squirrels – tree rats with the agility of point guards – but in fair weather, they frighten my finches. They leap from snowbank to porch to feeder and stuff their cheek pouches with chickadee feed. Donald Hall Read Quote
Friends die, friends become demented, friends quarrel, friends drift with old age into silence. Donald Hall Read Quote
When I lived summers at my grandparents’ farm, haying with my grandfather from 1938 to 1945, my dear grandmother Kate cooked abominably. For noon dinners, we might eat three days of fricasseed chicken from a setting hen that had boiled twelve hours. Donald Hall Read Quote
Although I was paid a salary in Ann Arbor, my wife and children and I drank powdered milk at six cents a quart instead of the stuff that came in bottles. I was a tightwad. Donald Hall Read Quote
Each season, my balance gets worse, and sometimes I fall. I no longer cook for myself but microwave widower food, mostly Stouffer’s. My fingers are clumsy and slow with buttons. Donald Hall Read Quote
After a couple of years of public high school, I went to Exeter – an insane conglomeration of adolescent males in the wilderness, all of whom claimed to hate poetry. Donald Hall Read Quote
