As I started reading this book, I wondered why Hall had published this book of selected poems only a few years after his White Apples and the Taste of Stones which had been a large collection of selected poems.  Even before I read his Postscriptum at the end of the book, I knew why:  This smaller collection allowed him to produce a higher concentration of beauty and excellence, a chronological trip through his more than 80 years, a truly wonderful book.  Its themes of childhood, love, death, loss, sex as a unique closeness between people who love each other, time passing in the seasons of his beloved New Hampshire farm, family and especially the generations of Kennisons, his beloved Jane Kenyon, dead at 47 now 26 years ago.  So many poems with important messages and so many with gorgeous lines.  The sameness of the everyday (“The moments of the day dwindled/to the small notations of clocks,/ and the day busily became another day, /and another, and today, when his hand moves/from his ear which still itches/to rest on his leg, it is marked with passage/of ten years.” from The Days), the beauty of nature (“goldfinches flew at her feeder like daffodils/with wings.” from Kill the Day), the inevitability and sweet sadness of loss (“Let us stifle under mud at the pond’s edge/and affirm that it is fitting/and delicious to lose everything.” from Affirmation).  Hall is simply my favorite poet, and if you don’t know his work, this is a perfect volume to start with.