Hall, A Carnival of Losses

I’m getting to the age that I read things about getting old. Not the advice that AARP sends out but essays by writers who are comfortably ahead of me on the march to 100. Donald Hall, the former poet laureate, delivered two such volumes of late, Essays After Eighty and A Carnival of Losses (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018), the latter written as he was nearing 90. (Hall died last month, on June 23.)

Essays After Eighty addressed old age more expansively, and humorously, than A Carnival of Losses. The new book has qualities of leftover stew: warmed-up reminiscences and bits and pieces that were probably in the literary root cellar, such as his recollections of poets. It’s still a delightful read, but if I were to recommend only a single title, it would be Essays After Eighty.