Donald Hall is named the new US poet laureate

New Hampshire poet Donald Hall has been named the United States’ new poet laureate, following in the footsteps of Robert Pinsky and Anthony Hecht.

The poet laureate works for the Library of Congress, but the library tries to keep the laureate’s duties to a minimum so they may work on their own projects.

“Donald Hall is one of America’s most distinctive and respected literary figures,” Librarian of Congress James H. Billington said in an announcement prepared for delivery Wednesday. “For more than 50 years, he has written beautiful poetry on a wide variety of subjects that are often distinctly American and conveyed with passion.”

He spoke briefly about his decision to accept Librarian of Congress James Billington's invitation, then turned his attention to the bold peonies in bloom along the front of his porch. "They're still exactly Jane's peonies, and she'd be pretty pleased with them right now," he said.

Hall's wife, the poet Jane Kenyon, died of leukemia at 47 in 1995. The experience defined his life and later work.

He told Associated Press that he hopes to persuade satellite radio to create a poetry only channel or have a poetry program on cable television.

Hall’s selection to the one-year post is a “long-overdue recognition for one of America’s greatest and most-admired men of letters,” National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Dana Gioia said in the announcement.

Born in Connecticut in 1928, Hall for the last 30 years has lived on an old family farm in the tiny west-central New Hampshire town of Wilmot, in the house where his mother and grandmother were born. Life among the region’s farms and mountains has been a theme of his poetry.

Hall has won the Lenore Marshall/Nation Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the Ruth Lilly Prize for Poetry.

Also a writer of prose and children’s books, he won the Caldecott Medal for his children’s work “Ox-Cart Man.”

He is a member of the Academy of Arts and Letters and has received two fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation.

Poet laureates receive $35,000 for the year as well as a travel allowance.