Bearded and etched with lines like a dry riverbed, the face of poet and essayist Donald Hall (The Best Day the Worst Day) gazes out from the cover of his collection Essays After Eighty. The unretouched honesty of that visage telegraphs the frankness, pathos and humor of these 14 essays about the "ceremony of losses" that is old age.
Hall lives alone in the New Hampshire farmhouse first occupied by his great-grandfather in 1865. It's the setting for "Out the Window," the first and most beautiful essay in the collection. In it, Hall observes the passing seasons from his blue armchair, interweaving lyrical descriptions of hummingbirds and snowdrops that "crack the wintry earth" with musings on his interior life in the middle of his ninth decade. "After a life of loving the old," he writes, "I turned old myself."
The dominant emotional tone of these pieces falls somewhere between gratitude and bemusement at Hall's own longevity. There's the inevitable irritability at the constraints and indignities age imposes, like the voluntary surrender of his driver's license at age 80 after two accidents or the challenges of making it to the bathroom. "It's almost relaxing to know I'll die fairly soon, as it's a comfort not to obsess about my next orgasm," he confesses with customary candor.
The book's title essay is one of its most rewarding. In barely four pages, Hall, whose prose style is notable for its directness and economy, delivers some valuable writing tips, including this priceless one that provides a fitting ending for this review: "Let the words flash a conclusion, then get out of the way." --Harvey Freedenberg, attorney and freelance reviewer