Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/poet-laureate-donald-hall-reflects-on-age-and-nature Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript New U.S. poet laureate Donald Hall gives a tour of his New Hampshire farm where he has written poetry for over 30 years. He also reads poems on nature, love and loss, suggests that poetry is becoming more popular and explores the art of saying the unsayable. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. JIM LEHRER: And finally tonight, the new poet laureate of the United States. Jeffrey Brown talked with him recently at his home in Wilmot, New Hampshire. JEFFREY BROWN: Even a first visit to Donald Hall's New Hampshire home can have a familiar feel if you've read his poetry. His subjects are all around: outside, Mount Kearsarge, lording over the horizon; Eagle Pond, just across the way and through the woods; the gardens surrounding the house, also inspiration for his writing; inside, the painted bed which Hall shared with his poet wife, Jane Kenyon, for 20 years. When she died here, he turned to poetry.This is Hall's ancestral home. His family has owned it since the 1800s, and he spent the summers here as a boy, working the farm with his grandfather, while the older man recited "Casey at the Bat" and other poems. Hall returned here to live full-time some 30 years ago, giving up his tenured position at the University of Michigan.And over time, he's established himself as one of the nation's leading men of letters, a prolific poet, essayist, author of children's books and textbooks. Now 78, the new poet laureate is a man devoted to words and to a particular place.