For nearly forty years, through changes in fashion and form, Donald Hall has stood in the front rank of American poets. In his twelfth book of poems, The Old Life, the title poem is a long autobiographical sequence. It is preceded by two substantial poems: "The Night of the Day," which makes a thematic connection with his Old and New Poems (1990), and "The Thirteenth Inning," which bridges the gap between this book and his remarkable 1993 collection, The Museum of Clear Ideas.

The book concludes with a heartbreaking lyric, "Without," commemorating the illness of his adored wife, the poet Jane Kenyon, who died in 1995.