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Let Evening Come
The work of America's Jane Kenyon (1947-95) is one of poetry's rarest and most heart-breaking gifts. After fighting depression for most of her life, Jane Kenyon died from leukaemia at the age of 47. Her quietly musical poems are intensely moving, compassionate meditations intently probing the life of the heart and spirit. Observing and absorbing small miracles in everyday life, these apparently simple poems grapple with fundamental questions of human existence. They are psalms of love and death, God and nature, joy and despair. Introduced by Donald Hall and Joyce Peseroff, Let Evening Come also includes an interview with Jane Kenyon, her thoughts on poetry, and her translations of 20 poems by Anna Akhmatova.
- GenresPoetryPoetry Plays
176 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1990
4 people are currently reading
292 people want to read
About the author
Jane Kenyon
20 books103 followersJane Kenyon was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and earned both her BA and MA from the University of Michigan. While a student at the University of Michigan Kenyon met her future husband, the poet Donald Hall, who taught there. After her marriage, Kenyon moved with Hall to Eagle Pond Farm, a New Hampshire farm that had been in Hall’s family for generations.
Kenyon published four volumes of poetry during her life: From Room to Room (1978), The Boat of Quiet Hours (1986), Let Evening Come (1990), and Constance (1993), and, as translator, Twenty Poems of Anna Akmatova (1985). Despite her relatively small output, her poetry was highly lauded by critics throughout her lifetime. As fellow poet Carol Muske remarked in the New York Times when describing Kenyon’s The Boat of Quiet Hours, “These poems surprise beauty at every turn and capture truth at its familiar New England slant. Here, in Keats’s terms, is a capable poet.” Indeed, Kenyon’s work has often been compared with that of English Romantic poet John Keats; in an essay on Kenyon for Contemporary Women Poets, Gary Roberts dubbed her a “Keatsian poet” and noted that, “like Keats, she attempts to redeem morbidity with a peculiar kind of gusto, one which seeks a quiet annihilation of self-identity through identification with benign things.”
The cycles of nature held special significance for Kenyon, who returned to them again and again, both in her variations on Keats’s ode “To Autumn,” and in other pastoral verse. In Let Evening Come, her third published collection—and one that found the poet taking what Poetry essayist Paul Breslin called “a darker turn”—Kenyon explored nature’s cycles in other ways: the fall of light from day to dusk to night, and the cycles of relationships with family and friends throughout a long span of years brought to a close by death. Let Evening Come “shows [Kenyon] at the height of her powers,” according to Muske in a review of the 1990 volume for the New York Times Book Review, with the poet’s “descriptive skills… as notable as her dramatic ones. Her rendering of natural settings, in lines of well-judged rhythm and simple syntax, contribute to the [volume’s] memorableness.”
Constance began Kenyon’s study of depression, and her work in this regard has been compared with that of the late poet Sylvia Plath. Comparing the two, Breslin wrote that “Kenyon’s language is much quieter, less self-dramatizing” than that of Plath, and where the earlier poet “would give herself up, writing her lyrical surrender to oblivion,… Kenyon fought to the end.” Breslin noted the absence of self-pity in Kenyon’s work, and the poet’s ability to separate from self and acknowledge the grief and emotional pain of others, as in her poems “Coats,” “Sleepers in Jaipur,” and “Gettysburg: July 1, 1863,” which imagines a mortally wounded soldier lying in wait for death on the historic battlefield.
New Hampshire’s poet laureate at the time of her untimely death at age forty-seven, Kenyon’s verse probed the inner psyche, particularly with regard to her own battle against depression. Writing for the last two decades of her life at her farm in northern New England, Kenyon is also remembered for her stoic portraits of domestic and rural life; as Gary Roberts noted, her poetry was “acutely faithful to the familiarities and mysteries of home life, and it is distinguished by intense calmness in the face of routine disappointments and tragedies.”
In Otherwise: New and Selected Poems (1996), a posthumous collection containing twenty poems written just prior to her death as well as several taken from her earlier books, Kenyon “chronicles the uncertainty of living as culpable, temporary creatures,” according to Nation contributor Emily Gordon. As Muske added in the New York Times Book Review, Kenyon avoids sentimentality throughout Otherwise. “The poet here sears a housewife’
Kenyon published four volumes of poetry during her life: From Room to Room (1978), The Boat of Quiet Hours (1986), Let Evening Come (1990), and Constance (1993), and, as translator, Twenty Poems of Anna Akmatova (1985). Despite her relatively small output, her poetry was highly lauded by critics throughout her lifetime. As fellow poet Carol Muske remarked in the New York Times when describing Kenyon’s The Boat of Quiet Hours, “These poems surprise beauty at every turn and capture truth at its familiar New England slant. Here, in Keats’s terms, is a capable poet.” Indeed, Kenyon’s work has often been compared with that of English Romantic poet John Keats; in an essay on Kenyon for Contemporary Women Poets, Gary Roberts dubbed her a “Keatsian poet” and noted that, “like Keats, she attempts to redeem morbidity with a peculiar kind of gusto, one which seeks a quiet annihilation of self-identity through identification with benign things.”
The cycles of nature held special significance for Kenyon, who returned to them again and again, both in her variations on Keats’s ode “To Autumn,” and in other pastoral verse. In Let Evening Come, her third published collection—and one that found the poet taking what Poetry essayist Paul Breslin called “a darker turn”—Kenyon explored nature’s cycles in other ways: the fall of light from day to dusk to night, and the cycles of relationships with family and friends throughout a long span of years brought to a close by death. Let Evening Come “shows [Kenyon] at the height of her powers,” according to Muske in a review of the 1990 volume for the New York Times Book Review, with the poet’s “descriptive skills… as notable as her dramatic ones. Her rendering of natural settings, in lines of well-judged rhythm and simple syntax, contribute to the [volume’s] memorableness.”
Constance began Kenyon’s study of depression, and her work in this regard has been compared with that of the late poet Sylvia Plath. Comparing the two, Breslin wrote that “Kenyon’s language is much quieter, less self-dramatizing” than that of Plath, and where the earlier poet “would give herself up, writing her lyrical surrender to oblivion,… Kenyon fought to the end.” Breslin noted the absence of self-pity in Kenyon’s work, and the poet’s ability to separate from self and acknowledge the grief and emotional pain of others, as in her poems “Coats,” “Sleepers in Jaipur,” and “Gettysburg: July 1, 1863,” which imagines a mortally wounded soldier lying in wait for death on the historic battlefield.
New Hampshire’s poet laureate at the time of her untimely death at age forty-seven, Kenyon’s verse probed the inner psyche, particularly with regard to her own battle against depression. Writing for the last two decades of her life at her farm in northern New England, Kenyon is also remembered for her stoic portraits of domestic and rural life; as Gary Roberts noted, her poetry was “acutely faithful to the familiarities and mysteries of home life, and it is distinguished by intense calmness in the face of routine disappointments and tragedies.”
In Otherwise: New and Selected Poems (1996), a posthumous collection containing twenty poems written just prior to her death as well as several taken from her earlier books, Kenyon “chronicles the uncertainty of living as culpable, temporary creatures,” according to Nation contributor Emily Gordon. As Muske added in the New York Times Book Review, Kenyon avoids sentimentality throughout Otherwise. “The poet here sears a housewife’
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews
January 30, 2025
Jane Kenyon is such a natural storyteller that many of her poems read like delightful anecdotes. If a reader is not shrewd, she'll miss the point of the poems.
Kenyon is a master of metaphor and an expert explorer of the ecstatic in verse--so subtly and beautifully. Her poems don't shout; they whisper. And in the quietness the message is heard all the more clearly.
What a gorgeous book, perfect for a casual or beginning reader of poetry as well as the experienced or serious reader. Kenyon is accessible and earnest; her poems are sweet.
Kenyon is a master of metaphor and an expert explorer of the ecstatic in verse--so subtly and beautifully. Her poems don't shout; they whisper. And in the quietness the message is heard all the more clearly.
What a gorgeous book, perfect for a casual or beginning reader of poetry as well as the experienced or serious reader. Kenyon is accessible and earnest; her poems are sweet.
January 27, 2020
A cloud — huge, calm,
And dignified — covered the sun
But did not, could not put it out.
The light surged back again.
Nothing could rouse her then
From that joy so violent
It was hard to distinguish from pain.
...............
I enjoyed this simple poetry about ordinary things: walking the dog, caring for aging parents, grieving great losses, handling social anxiety, seeking answers from God, looking for a place to belong.
And dignified — covered the sun
But did not, could not put it out.
The light surged back again.
Nothing could rouse her then
From that joy so violent
It was hard to distinguish from pain.
...............
I enjoyed this simple poetry about ordinary things: walking the dog, caring for aging parents, grieving great losses, handling social anxiety, seeking answers from God, looking for a place to belong.
December 10, 2021
This would be the finest collection of Jane Kenyon’s poems. Most of the poems in the the collection I read last night, assembled by her husband after her early death, were culled from this volume.
What isn’t here are the death poems, the poems of her losing battle to leukemia. For those powerful poems you have to go to the “best of” book. Nevertheless, death is here too.
And life.
Truly an exceptional and overlooked American poet.
Highly recommended.
What isn’t here are the death poems, the poems of her losing battle to leukemia. For those powerful poems you have to go to the “best of” book. Nevertheless, death is here too.
And life.
Truly an exceptional and overlooked American poet.
Highly recommended.
June 8, 2012
Jane Kenyon’s Let Evening Come is full of quiet intensity and natural elegance. Written with an unquestionable mastery of expression, these deceptively simple poems speak volumes, patiently exhuming the sublime secreted away in the everyday, the simple and overlooked; a dirt road branching from the main street, a faded gravestone, and a trundling snow plow become reminders of our connection with the simple and tangible; a cocktail party with old friends and overheard conversations on an airplane become moments of incredible insight; walking alongside a dog becomes profound. Let Evening Come is superb.
November 8, 2022
I will be reading her other poetry collection as well.
Talks about everyday stuff, but uses language magically to convey the unexpected warmth and comfort (and pain) of living.
Her experiences turned poetry include: flying out of Maui and eavesdropping on a conversation of an illicit couple; visiting a war museum and musing on history.
Reading her poetry makes one's perception sharper.
-------------------
While We Were Arguing
The first snow fell - or should I say
it flew slantwise, so it seemed
to be the house
that moved so heedlessly through space.
Tears splashed and beaded on your sweater.
Then for long moments you did not speak.
No pleasure in the cups of tea I made
distractedly at four.
The sky grew dark. I heard the paper come
and went out. The moon looked down
between disintegrating clouds. I said
aloud: "You see, we have done harm."
------------------------
With the Dog at Sunrise
Although we always come this way
I never noticed before that the poplars
growing along the ravine
shine pink in the light of winter dawn.
What am I going to say
in my letter to Sarah - a widow
at thirty-one, alone in the violence
of her grief, sleepless,
and utterly cast down?
I look at the lithe, pink trees more carefully,
remembering Stephen, the photographer.
With the hunger of two I take them in.
Perhaps I can tell her that.
The dog furrows his brow while pissing long
and thoughtfully against an ancient hemlock.
The snow turns the saffron of a monk's robe
and acrid steam ascends.
Searching for God is the first thing and the last,
but in between such trouble, and such pain.
Far up in the woods where no one goes
deer take their ease under the great
pines, nose to steaming nose....
Talks about everyday stuff, but uses language magically to convey the unexpected warmth and comfort (and pain) of living.
Her experiences turned poetry include: flying out of Maui and eavesdropping on a conversation of an illicit couple; visiting a war museum and musing on history.
Reading her poetry makes one's perception sharper.
-------------------
While We Were Arguing
The first snow fell - or should I say
it flew slantwise, so it seemed
to be the house
that moved so heedlessly through space.
Tears splashed and beaded on your sweater.
Then for long moments you did not speak.
No pleasure in the cups of tea I made
distractedly at four.
The sky grew dark. I heard the paper come
and went out. The moon looked down
between disintegrating clouds. I said
aloud: "You see, we have done harm."
------------------------
With the Dog at Sunrise
Although we always come this way
I never noticed before that the poplars
growing along the ravine
shine pink in the light of winter dawn.
What am I going to say
in my letter to Sarah - a widow
at thirty-one, alone in the violence
of her grief, sleepless,
and utterly cast down?
I look at the lithe, pink trees more carefully,
remembering Stephen, the photographer.
With the hunger of two I take them in.
Perhaps I can tell her that.
The dog furrows his brow while pissing long
and thoughtfully against an ancient hemlock.
The snow turns the saffron of a monk's robe
and acrid steam ascends.
Searching for God is the first thing and the last,
but in between such trouble, and such pain.
Far up in the woods where no one goes
deer take their ease under the great
pines, nose to steaming nose....
January 20, 2022
Through the screen door
I hear a hummingbird, inquiring
for nectar among the stalwart
hollyhocks - an erratic flying
ruby, asking for sweets among
the sticky-throated flowers.
The sky won't darken in the west
until ten. Where shall I turn
this light and tired mind?
* * *
When I take the chilly tools
from the shed's darkness, I come
out to a world made new
by heat and light.
The snake basks and dozes
on a large flat stone.
It reared and scolded me
for raking too close to its hole.
Like a made red brain
the involute rhubarb leaf
thinks its way up
through loam.
* * *
We sit with friends at the round
glass table. The talk is clever;
everyone rises to it. Bees
come to the spiral pear peelings
on your plate.
From my lap or your hand
the spice of our morning's privacy
comes drifting up. Fall sun
passes through the wine.
I hear a hummingbird, inquiring
for nectar among the stalwart
hollyhocks - an erratic flying
ruby, asking for sweets among
the sticky-throated flowers.
The sky won't darken in the west
until ten. Where shall I turn
this light and tired mind?
- After Working Long on One Thing, pg. 6
* * *
When I take the chilly tools
from the shed's darkness, I come
out to a world made new
by heat and light.
The snake basks and dozes
on a large flat stone.
It reared and scolded me
for raking too close to its hole.
Like a made red brain
the involute rhubarb leaf
thinks its way up
through loam.
- April Chores, pg. 26
* * *
We sit with friends at the round
glass table. The talk is clever;
everyone rises to it. Bees
come to the spiral pear peelings
on your plate.
From my lap or your hand
the spice of our morning's privacy
comes drifting up. Fall sun
passes through the wine.
- September Garden Party, pg. 43
September 5, 2020
Kenyon's poems are filled with observations of the details that most of us miss. Kenyon finds peace and inspiration in the everyday, usually unnoticed objects of everyday life. She fits these objects into patterns that we recognize. She is accepting and outraged by the limitations of our minds, memories, and imaginations. Her poetry is a deceptively deep well.
June 16, 2022
Kenyon's poems are filled with observations of the details that most of us miss. Kenyon finds peace and inspiration in the everyday, usually unnoticed objects of everyday life. She fits these objects into patterns that we recognize. She is accepting and outraged by the limitations of our minds, memories, and imaginations. Her poetry is a deceptively deep well.
February 9, 2019
Jane Kenyon used subtlety to great effect. Sometimes her poems wash over you, and you just don't know how deeply you are affected until much later. Kenyon's work is gentle and easy to read with an undercurrent of the tribulations of day to day life.
October 28, 2024
So seasonal, often sad but hopeful, focusing on small moments of beauty, emotion, or tenderness. Love the regular tie-ins with holidays, with plants, weather, people changing with the seasons. Change happens, the message seems to be, but "God does not leave us comfortless."
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 19, 2017
A lovely book of poetry I flew through in a day. I love Jane Kenyon's voice.
August 7, 2019
Perhaps 3.5; a few of the poems are original and affecting. Several feature lovely phrase-turns but center quite forgettable settings and moments.
April 17, 2021
I feel blessed to get to see a bit of the everyday world through this poet's words. I feel the spaces between words, and the line breaks make me consider words I once thought insignificant.
Read
July 6, 2021Is it shitty of me to admit that I forgot everything about this poem almost as soon as I read it?
June 19, 2023
The title poem is what drew me to Kenyon, but there are other lovely introspective poems as well. Her observations encourage me to look deeper, and to get back into writing poetry again.
September 17, 2016
Jane Kenyon is the rare poet who shared her Christian faith and was still recognized as a critically important poet. Perhaps it is because her faith avoids any syrupy raptures, instead, providing a different glimpse into everyday life. Still, even an excellent site like the Poetry Foundation can ignore her faith when writing about her life.The literary world is not comfortable with faith, even with “one of their own.”
Anyone reading the collection “Let Evening Come,” will see Kenyon’s faith clearly. It is present in her everyday mentions of her work at church or in one of her daily walks with her dog. In “At the Winter Solstice,” we get a glimpse of a Christmas Eve pageant in a small church:
“At the village church last night
the boys–shepherds and wisemen–
pressed close to the manger in obedience,
wishing only for time to pass;
but the girl dressed as Mary trembled
as she leaned over the pungent hay,
and like the mother of Christ
wondered why she had been chosen.”
But it is a faith of honesty. While she often finds comfort, she also struggles — as do most jane-kenyonpeople. Kenyon suffered from depression, wrestling with it for most of her short life (she died from leukemia at age 47 in 1995). Struggling to reconcile it with her beliefs, she is left short of answers. In “Now Where?” she opens with verses that can reflect depression or grief:
“It wakes when I wake, walks
when I walk, turns back when I
turn back, beating me to the door.
It spoils my food and steals
my sleep, and mocks me, saying,
‘Where is your God now?'”
Most of her poetry celebrates the rural and rustic found around her New Hampshire farm, although she was born and raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan, not leaving until she married the poet Donald Hall after finishing her Masters degree at the University of Michigan. Kenyon sees much in the simple actions of the day. In her poem, “Father and Son,” she writes how the neighbor keeps cutting wood with his chainsaw as his son helps. He does it on Sunday afternoons and she comes to “mind the noise.” But the neighbor is:
“intent on getting wood for winter, the last,
as it happened, of their life together.”
So, she takes from this everyday scene which can even be annoying and gives us pause to think about these moments when either the father or son (she hints it is the father) dies before the next season. The importance of the present moment is never lost on Kenyon. She often sees in others the stories they carry with them, revealed in tiny glimpses. She does the same with seasons as they come and go. She tends to embrace each season. In, “Dark Morning: Snow”:
“It falls on the vole, nosing somewhere
through weeds, and on the open
eye of the pond. It makes the mail
come late.
The nuthatch spirals head first
down the tree.
I’m sleepy and benign in the dark.
There nothing I want…”
Kenyon appeals to me and others because she reveals how many of us feel. As a Christian, I can relate to her moments of comfort and her moments of despair. She does not need to go far to find her inspiration — it is the farm she lives on, the people surrounding her, her faith, her dog, and her friends. We benefit from how her eyes often see more than we do. The present does not slip by her. Instead, she lives in the moment with an eye on eternity.
The collection ends with the title poem, and it is one that is often reprinted. In fact, it has been set to music by several composers with my favorite being by M. L. P. Badarak.
It is a beautiful poem, so I’ll let it end this post
.
Let Evening Come
Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.
Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.
Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and moon disclose her silver horn.
Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.
To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.
Let it come, as it will, and don’t
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.
Anyone reading the collection “Let Evening Come,” will see Kenyon’s faith clearly. It is present in her everyday mentions of her work at church or in one of her daily walks with her dog. In “At the Winter Solstice,” we get a glimpse of a Christmas Eve pageant in a small church:
“At the village church last night
the boys–shepherds and wisemen–
pressed close to the manger in obedience,
wishing only for time to pass;
but the girl dressed as Mary trembled
as she leaned over the pungent hay,
and like the mother of Christ
wondered why she had been chosen.”
But it is a faith of honesty. While she often finds comfort, she also struggles — as do most jane-kenyonpeople. Kenyon suffered from depression, wrestling with it for most of her short life (she died from leukemia at age 47 in 1995). Struggling to reconcile it with her beliefs, she is left short of answers. In “Now Where?” she opens with verses that can reflect depression or grief:
“It wakes when I wake, walks
when I walk, turns back when I
turn back, beating me to the door.
It spoils my food and steals
my sleep, and mocks me, saying,
‘Where is your God now?'”
Most of her poetry celebrates the rural and rustic found around her New Hampshire farm, although she was born and raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan, not leaving until she married the poet Donald Hall after finishing her Masters degree at the University of Michigan. Kenyon sees much in the simple actions of the day. In her poem, “Father and Son,” she writes how the neighbor keeps cutting wood with his chainsaw as his son helps. He does it on Sunday afternoons and she comes to “mind the noise.” But the neighbor is:
“intent on getting wood for winter, the last,
as it happened, of their life together.”
So, she takes from this everyday scene which can even be annoying and gives us pause to think about these moments when either the father or son (she hints it is the father) dies before the next season. The importance of the present moment is never lost on Kenyon. She often sees in others the stories they carry with them, revealed in tiny glimpses. She does the same with seasons as they come and go. She tends to embrace each season. In, “Dark Morning: Snow”:
“It falls on the vole, nosing somewhere
through weeds, and on the open
eye of the pond. It makes the mail
come late.
The nuthatch spirals head first
down the tree.
I’m sleepy and benign in the dark.
There nothing I want…”
Kenyon appeals to me and others because she reveals how many of us feel. As a Christian, I can relate to her moments of comfort and her moments of despair. She does not need to go far to find her inspiration — it is the farm she lives on, the people surrounding her, her faith, her dog, and her friends. We benefit from how her eyes often see more than we do. The present does not slip by her. Instead, she lives in the moment with an eye on eternity.
The collection ends with the title poem, and it is one that is often reprinted. In fact, it has been set to music by several composers with my favorite being by M. L. P. Badarak.
It is a beautiful poem, so I’ll let it end this post
.
Let Evening Come
Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.
Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.
Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and moon disclose her silver horn.
Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.
To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.
Let it come, as it will, and don’t
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.
June 19, 2013
Not as good as The Boat of Quiet Hours mostly because the flaws of that book are a little more exaggerated here. A little too sentimental. The personal stories are just not worth writing about at times. I found myself asking, "Who cares?" Actually, I used a swear word which I will forbear to use here for those delicate Jane Kenyon fans. The title poem Let Evening Come is just such a miserable cliche that when I came to it, I wanted to toss the book. But the strengths of her writing are here as well: her great use of detail and word choice.
Let Evening Come
BY JANE KENYON
Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.
Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.
Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.
Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.
To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.
Let it come, as it will, and don’t
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.
Let Evening Come
BY JANE KENYON
Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.
Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.
Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.
Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.
To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.
Let it come, as it will, and don’t
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.
December 20, 2013
This batch of Kenyon's poems are very good. Some are great. On the whole, I don't believe this collection is as consistently brilliant as Constance, but that's asking a lot. You certainly wouldn't go wrong in picking these up, as Kenyon was a national treasure and even her "just good" poems are a delight for the senses. Honestly, if you're interesting in getting acquainted with Kenyon's work, I'd just purchase her collection, Otherwise: New and Selected Poems. It's got an excellent crop of poems from each of her books as well as 20 new poems which she wrote at the height of her powers. That collection was assembled by Kenyon and Donald Hall during the months of her cancer treatment, and so in addition to being a beautiful collection of poems by a supremely talented soul, the whole experience of reading it is lent a devastating poignancy. You'll be moved to silence and happy to be so quiet.
Some favorites are: "We Let The Boat Drift," "Spring Changes," "Summer: 6:00 A.M.," "With The Dog At Sunrise," and "After An Illness, Walking The Dog."
Some favorites are: "We Let The Boat Drift," "Spring Changes," "Summer: 6:00 A.M.," "With The Dog At Sunrise," and "After An Illness, Walking The Dog."
December 18, 2007
loved most of this book ... felt a little distanced at times with such quiet, unassuming writing ... felt that maybe she wasn't looking as deep into an image. but that's probably what makes her poetry so attractive
Read
November 10, 2008I understand her poetry - it makes sense- mostly. A little dark- just an edge that seems to be with each poem. I know she suffered from depression- so I read that into every poem. I also know she died in 1995 (from leukemia) when she was about 47. I also read that sad fact into every poem.
August 10, 2016
Jane Kenyon has a way of tucking breathtakingly profound sentiments inside poems about gardening, or going to the store, or walking the dog (so much dog-walking...). I will miss nibbling away at this collection every night and can see myself coming back again for seconds sometime down the road
Read
January 20, 2011most heart wrenching.
I heard her recite these before her death in person for the screening of the
Bill Moyers special
I heard her recite these before her death in person for the screening of the
Bill Moyers special
September 26, 2011
New Hampshire
October 20, 2011
married to poet laureate Donald Hall
February 5, 2012
I love Jane Kenyon's poetry -- as a New Hampshire poet, her work is easily local, and her poems often leave me with a feeling that I've been snuggled in a blanket on a cold rainy day.
June 2, 2013
I love the poetry of Jane Kenyon and this is a favorite book of mine. She is no longer with us. She was the wife of former U.S. Poet Laureate, Donald Hall.
June 28, 2013
Another of my all-time favorites.
June 3, 2015
I'm new to poetry, but this was a good one to start with for me. She writes with simple phrases that are deep with meaning. Thought provoking without being over my head.
July 21, 2015
Lovely
Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews