Newly announced Poet Laureate Donald Hall says he will work to improve poetry's standing in the United States, seeking to provide new inspiration to the medium.

Hall has lived for years on the New Hampshire farm that his grandparents used to own, and he writes in the room that he slept in as a boy.

Robert Siegel talks with Hall, who was appointed poet laureate on Wednesday by the Library of Congress.

The new poet laureate also reads from three of his poems: "Old Roses," "Man in the Dead Machine," and "Weeds and Peonies," which is about his late wife, the poet Jane Kenyon.

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