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0 of 3 Premium Clicks used this month SUBSCRIBE Print + Online Subscriber Activation | Register x Forgot Password | Need an Account? subscribe | newsletter | deals Classifieds Jobs Autos Real Estate FEATURED » NEWS NOW Supreme Court upholds nationwide subsidies for health insurance ... Our View: Protect liquid assets ... Ashland Calendar, Thursday, June 25 ... Supreme Court upholds nationwide subsidies for health insurance ... Our View: Protect liquid assets ... Ashland Calendar, Thursday, June 25 ... Book Notes: Essays on aging, from an aging poet Comment By Rae Padilla Francoeur Wicked Local DailyTidings.com By Rae Padilla Francoeur Wicked Local Posted Jan. 12, 2015 at 9:05 AM By Rae Padilla Francoeur Wicked Local Posted Jan. 12, 2015 at 9:05 AM » Social News “Essays After Eighty” by Donald Hall. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston/New York, 2014. 144 pages. $22. When a friend told me she decided not to buy poet and essayist Donald Hall’s “Essays After Eighty” for her 80-something-year-old father for Christmas, I asked why. “Too close to the bone,” she said about the essays that come at aging from all angles, from all moods and all seasons in northern New England. Perhaps she should have taken the risk. Hall, the U.S. poet laureate in 2006-07, lives, writes and grows older at his New Hampshire family homestead. From his sitting chair at the window, he lays out the writer’s life with insight, an undiminished supply of smart sentences, no small slathering of wit, and respectable sobriety when the occasion warrants. Though Hall, in his mid-’80s, has some years on me, I have once again been welcomed home by this writer. Can a book be a home? Yes, when it gives you an education, cheers you at just the right moments and talks to you with respect and clarity. For some people, books provide the material needed for informed maturation throughout life. And, yes, “Essays After Eighty” is close to the bone. But many will thank Hall for telling us what, precisely, aging looks like and, even, what it can be if we reflect with wit and grace. And do not discount the importance of amusing ourselves. When you read Hall, you cannot help but think that he is his own best audience. Because of this book, we see the things that fall away as we, more specifically Hall, ages — from access to upstairs rooms to the cane incrementally replaced by the wheelchair to the home-cooked meals to the certitude of the toilet’s precise location. Thank goodness for Stouffer’s. For neighbors and friends. For the fire department that twice had to extinguish a fire ignited by a cigarette in Hall’s blue reading chair. As the world view grows more circumscribed, it can attain sharper focus. The cow barn that once sheltered milking cows is now “a barn for looking at” — something Hall does every single day from his chair. “Out the Window” is an essay full of observation, physical and otherwise. “When we turn 80, we understand that we are extraterrestrial,” he writes. And people can be condescending. A museum guard once asked him how he liked his “din-din.” Personal essays, so good for rapt reading, are also good for commiseration. Who among friends admits these petty (sadly universal) degradations? Every essay is worthy of your time. The title essay is a must-read for writers. Hall’s essays undergo 30 to 80 revisions before he lets one go. He has abandoned writing poetry, his passion, because he’s lost what was propelled from his “brain-depths” by testosterone’s thrust. In this essay, he mentions the need for contrast. In many cases in the personal essay form, that contrast is personal revelation of an unsavory sort. A good essayist like Hall, though he may no longer have the physical balance to stand at the top of the stairs, can still balance character and conflict and come out unscathed. We do learn a few unsavory things. Hall smokes, despite two major bouts with cancer early on. And he’s honest about the way cigarettes impair the quality of life for him and those around him. The rug at the foot of his gazing chair and surrounding books show signs of scorching. He has dropped many a burning cigarette. In one case, it led to a car accident; in another, to the chair fire mentioned earlier. Hall has an awareness of his physical self that follows him through these essays. In “A Yeti in the Distance” he writes of “life’s widest smile” after receiving an award from President Barack Obama. He also writes of Ken Burn’s image of him looking wide-mouthed and stupefied. In “Three Beards,” we learn that each of his bearded stages was instigated by a woman. It’s worth noting that the cover of the book features a close-up of Hall that is brilliant in both composition and in what it captures in the man’s face and eyes. It becomes our companion as we read. In “One Road,” which talks about a European road trip he takes with his young wife, Hall reminds us that we “divorce for the same reasons we marry.” What drew him to his first wife later fueled the animus. Hall writes frequently of his second and beloved wife, Jan Kenyon, the poet. While Hall was undergoing chemotherapy for liver cancer, she was diagnosed with leukemia and died 15 months later. They lived together happily on the family farm in Wilmot, New Hampshire. Kenyon’s poetry, ventures Hall, may survive when other poets’ work has not. This collection considers life lived from Hall’s perspective in his reading chair. Hall writes that he rather enjoys looking at the art in museums from a wheelchair. It’s different, but the perspective has value. His life view from his reading chair is also worthy, for it is a serene and contemplative place where Hall has joined fully with self. It’s not just the past that interests Hall as he gazes outward and inward simultaneously. He’s seeing life lived in the more acute stages of old age, when decline hastens and gathers a certain undeniable momentum. I’m grateful that this “extraterrestrial” had the poetry in him to flavor the sometimes sobering words in such a way as to make them not just palatable but rich and entertaining. This offering is more friend, more home than it is pages in a book. Rae Padilla Francoeur’s memoir, “Free Fall: A Late-in-Life Love Affair,” is available online or in some bookstores. Write her at [email protected]. Read her blog at freefallrae.blogspot.com or follow her on Twitter at @RaeAF. By Rae Padilla Francoeur Wicked Local DailyTidings.com By Rae Padilla Francoeur Wicked Local Posted Jan. 12, 2015 at 9:05 AM » Comment or view comments Reader Reaction » STAY INFORMED Email NewsLetter Sign Up Today Sign up for our newsletter and have the top headlines from your community delivered right to your inbox. Southern Oregon Directory Featured Businesses Loading... 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