"Why should a nonagenarian hold anything back?" Here the late Donald Hall takes up the challenge, revealing several instances of "the worst thing I ever did," and through his equally uncensored tales of literary friendships with James Wright, Richard Wilbur, and Seamus Heaney. Reading these essays makes us realize how much we miss Hall, one of the greatest poets of recent decades and a Daedalus favorite. Here the former Poet Laureate returns to the death of his beloved wife, Jane Kenyon, in an essay as poignant as anything he's written, while also commenting on the writers who have meant the most to him. Also acknowledging the pleasures of solitude and the gallows humor of aging, Hall quips that, "You are old when someone mentions an event two years in the future and looks embarrassed."