Ox Cart Man

“Ox Cart Man” portrays the actions of a rural New Hampshire farmer as he prepares to go to market and sell his wares. Hall’s original occasion for composing this poem was a story his cousin Paul heard from an old man who likewise had heard it from another old man when he was a child. Hall saw the cyclical story as parallel to the poet’s role: “I was always conscious that the Ox-Cart Man […] implied the annual round for poet as well as for farmer. I suppose I already knew that the round must eventually stop. Of course, I am fortunate that so far for me, it has continued its motion” (Dueben, Alex. “At Eagle Pond.” Poetry Foundation). The man and the poet must each continually return to the same minutiae of craft and processing. Their products—potatoes, birch brooms, or a poems—do not magically appear for the maker; each requires diligence, persistence, and hard work.

In an essay about the origins of the poem and the children’s book that he wrote several years later, Hall described dreaming of his grandfather “who divested himself of everything he could gather, in his stewardship carrying all the past through winter darkness into present light. I understand: this duty is my duty also” (Winant, Johanna. “Rereading Donald Hall's Beautiful Children's Book in a Time of Turmoil.” Slate Magazine, Slate, 5 July 2018). Hall sees the work that the ox cart man does as far reaching, able to produce something inherently valuable. In a similar way, Hall sees his writing work as a duty that requires the same cycles of labor and results in the same kind of reward.