On this Literary Friendships event, host Garrison Keillor shares the stage with Robert Bly and Donald Hall, leading figures in American letters. The two met as undergraduates at Harvard in the late 1940s, where Bly first published Hall's poetry in the school literary journal. Through letters and visits, they've corresponded for over 50 years.

Bly is a National Book Award-winning poet, storyteller, and essayist. He has translated Rilke, Neruda, and others, and has most published The Insanity of Empire: Poems Against the Iraq War.

Hall was the first poetry editor of the Paris Review and has served as the New Hampshire Poet Laureate. He has written numerous books of poetry and prose, including The Painted Bed, which examines his grief at the loss of his wife, the poet Jane Kenyon, and explores the life he has lived since.