18 pages • 36 minutes read
Donald HallOx Cart Man
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1977A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Further Reading & Resources
Related Poems
“Without“ by Donald Hall (1995)
Written in the wake of his wife Jane Kenyon’s premature death, “Without” is a poem of deep grief that became the title poem of a collection ruminating on Kenyon’s life and death, for which Hall won the L.L. Winship/Pen New England Award. Hall continued to write about Kenyon for the remainder of his life, both in future poetry collections, memoirs, and essays.
“Affirmation“ by Donald Hall (2001)
Hall’s poetry often examined the effects of aging, and this poem does so with honesty. “Affirmation” begins bluntly with the line, “To grow old is to lose everything,” and goes on to describe changing romantic relationships, friendships, and sexual connections across time, before ending with the affirmation that “it is fitting / and delicious to lose everything.”
“White Apples“ by Donald Hall (2006)
This nine-line poem simply and cleanly evokes the speaker’s grief in the wake of his father’s death. Alternating short two-word lines with longer lines, and making use of dramatic enjambment and a lack of punctuation, the poem quietly and effectively conveys a small moment of deep and resonant sadness.
“Safe Sex“ by Donald Hall (2006)
“Safe Sex” takes an everyday phrase and reinterprets it to examine the complexities in romantic relationships. Evoking traditional images from literature (including an allusion to Ophelia’s death in Shakespeare’s Hamlet), “Safe Sex” asks the reader to question preconceived notions of safety within a relationship.
Further Literary Resources
Ox-Cart Man by Donald Hall and Barbara Cooney (1979)
Hall’s adaptation of the Ox Cart Man story into a children’s book illustrated by Barbara Cooney won the 1980 Caldecott Medal. While inspired by the same story as the poem, and featuring a similar main character, the children’s book expands the world of the poem by adding the man’s family.
Filmmaker Bill Moyers profiles the couple in their New Hampshire home in 1993, a documentary for which he would later earn an Emmy Award. The film incorporates both poets reading their own, and each other's, work, and includes discussion of their struggles with both physical and mental health. Hall reads several poems from across his collections, as well as one of his wife’s, and speaks to their experience living in his ancestral farmhouse in New Hampshire.
Essential American Poets (2008)
While he was US Poet Laureate, Donald Hall, in conjunction with the Poetry Foundation and the UK Poet Laureate Andrew Motion, created a podcast of essential American poets reading from their work. The podcast includes Wallace Stevens, Howard Nemeroff, Lucille Clifton, and Sharon Olds, among many others.
This article about poet couples features, among others, Donald Hall and Jane Kenyon. Viewing their lives and work through the lens of their relationship, the article quotes from their poetry and from other interviews. Hall remarks: “all marriages start in ignorance and many from need; what matters is what you do after you marry.”
Listen to Poem
Donald Hall reads his poem.
Donald Hall is the featured reader in this 2006 episode. He reads “White Apples” and “The Man in the Dead Machine,” poems that examine typical themes for Hall, including grief and sadness.
