[2] Early in his career, he became the first poetry editor of The Paris Review (1953–1961), the quarterly literary journal, and was noted for interviewing poets and other authors on their craft.

[3] He is regarded as a "plainspoken, rural poet," and it has been said that, in his work, he "explores the longing for a more bucolic past and reflects [an] abiding reverence for nature.

Hall began writing even before reaching his teens,[6] beginning with poems and short stories, and then moving on to novels and dramatic verse.

[9] On returning to the United States, Hall went to Stanford University, where he spent one year as a creative writing fellow, studying under the poet-critic, Yvor Winters.

In 1957, with Robert Pack and Louis Simpson, he edited an anthology which was to make a significant impression on both sides of the Atlantic, New Poets of England and America.

Hall and Kenyon were profiled at their home in a 1993 PBS documentary, "A Life Together", which aired as an episode of Bill Moyers Journal.

Another book of poems dedicated to Kenyon, Painted Bed, is cited by Publishers Weekly as "more controlled, more varied and more powerful, this taut follow-up volume reexamines Hall's grief while exploring the life he has made since.

It examines mourning in 16 long-lined stanzas, alternating catalogue with aphorism, understatement with keen lament: 'How many times will he die in his own lifetime?'"

In addition to poetry, he also wrote several memoirs (among them Life Work and String Too Short to be Saved), children's books (notably Ox-Cart Man, which won the Caldecott Medal), and a number of plays.

[12] His recurring themes include New England rural living, baseball, and how work conveys meaning to ordinary life.

He is regarded as a master both of received forms and free verse, and a champion of the art of revision, for whom writing is a craft, not merely a mode of self-expression.

Hall won many awards, including two Guggenheim Fellowships and a Robert Frost Medal, and served as poet laureate of his state.

[13] When not working on poems, he turned his hand to reviews, criticism, textbooks, sports journalism, memoirs, biographies, children's stories, and plays.

[20] Donald Hall was the subject of "Great Gig in the Sky," the 5th track of Roger Waters' album The Dark Side of the Moon Redux, released on October 6th, 2023.