a momentary brilliance but a sustained vision. He has been dedicated to making the language reflect the surprise, the turns and leaps of memory and recurrent apparition, in which pain and beauty are often indistinguishable. This new collection [The Mother on the Other Side of the World] displays an intimate authority and mystery of tone that are the fulfillment of a genuine gift and uncompromising devotion to it." --W.S. Merwin "The poems are pure, untainted by irony, naked and delighted with being. If there is one unyielding source and destination in all these poems, it is love – people and things worth loving, and the quiet mantra that's always making itself matter. Though you might find yourself laughing or wincing, you understand that above all, James Baker Hall is a serious poet. He means what he says…. Hall is the real deal, the real, beautiful deal." -- Maurice Manning Selected awards 2001 - Poet Laureate of Kentucky 1993 - Southern Arts Council Fellowship 1986 - Al Smith Fellowship 1986 - Honorable Mention, San Francisco Art Institute Film Festival 1983 - Pushcart Prize 1980 - National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship 1973 - Juror's Prize: Photovision (Boston) 1967 - O. Henry Prize 1960 - Stegner Fellowship References External links James Baker Hall Official Website: Archive of photographs and films KET Living By Words: Documentary on James Baker Hall, Wendell Berry, Bobbie Ann Mason, Ed McClanahan, and Gurney Norman James Baker Hall at Larkspur Press 1935 births 20th-century American novelists American male novelists 20th-century American photographers Writers from Lexington, Kentucky People from Scott County, Kentucky University of Kentucky alumni University of Kentucky faculty 2009 deaths 20th-century American poets American male poets Artists from Lexington, Kentucky 20th-century American male writers Novelists from Kentucky Poets Laureate of Kentucky