Life Work

"Trust a poet to write a memoir that is not a memoir but a series of reflections organized around a theme—in this case, the pleasures of work. Hall, a winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award..., opens by making a distinction between jobs, chores, and work. He then explains himself by detailing the dedicated lives of his sturdy New England ancestors, his decision to leave the security of teaching for full-time writing, and his struggle with recurrent cancer—most annoying because it keeps him from the 'absorbedness' that working on a poem allows. Along the way, we learn something of…