Champagne at the Gandy Dancer

Thu, 09/20/2007 - 9:33am by annevm

Today is the birthday of world renowned poet Donald Hall, and to celebrate, The Writers Almanac is displaying one of his poems, “The judge was decent, but . . “ about Hall’s 1972 marriage in Ann Arbor to poet Jane Kenyon. As the poem says, it was a basic municipal marriage -- but afterwards they did drink champagne at the Gandy Dancer. Five years later they remarried in New Hampshire, ". . . joyful
in a wooden church,
a Saturday afternoon in April,
only Jack Jensen our
friend and minister with us . . ."
Hall taught at U-M from 1957-75, first as assistant professor, later as professor of English. The couple moved to New Hampshire, where Kenyon died in 1995 of leukemia. To read more about this famous literary couple, hop to our database Literature Resource Center.