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Drafts of Donald Hall’s Ox Cart Man

Donald Hall’s poem “Ox Cart Man” first appeared in the October 3, 1977 issue of The New Yorker. Hall revised it substantially prior to its publication, as demonstrated by the nineteen drafts of the poem found in the Donald Hall Collection here in UNH Special Collections. He then revised the poem slightly prior to its publication in Kicking the Leaves (1978) and again for publication in Old and New Poems (1990). Hall later expanded the text as the basis for a children’s book, Ox-Cart Man (1979), which included illustrations by Barbara Cooney. Ox-Cart Man received the American Library Association’s Caldecott Medal in 1980.