The Best Poems of Jane Kenyon: Poems

by Jane Kenyon

Overview

“Jane Kenyon had a virtually faultless ear. She was an exquisite master of the art of poetry.” —Wendell Berry

Published twenty-five years after her untimely death, The Best Poems of Jane Kenyon presents the essential work of one of America’s most cherished poets—celebrated for her tenacity, spirit, and grace. In their inquisitive explorations and direct language, Jane Kenyon’s poems disclose a quiet certainty in the natural world and a lifelong dialogue with her faith and her questioning of it. As a crucial aspect of these beloved poems of companionship, she confronts her struggle with severe depression on its own stark terms. Selected by Kenyon’s husband, Donald Hall, just before his death in 2018, The Best Poems of Jane Kenyon collects work from across a life and career that will be, as she writes in one poem, “simply lasting.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781644450192
Publisher:	Graywolf Press
Publication date:	04/21/2020
Pages:	112
Sales rank:	336,975
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Jane Kenyon (1947–1995) published four collections of poetry during her lifetime: From Room to Room, The Boat of Quiet Hours, Let Evening Come, and Constance. Her Collected Poems was published in 2005.

Table of Contents

From Room to Room 3

The Thimble 4

Finding a Long Gray Hair 5

The Needle 6

The Shirt 7

From the Back Steps 8

Cages 9

At the Feeder 12

Afternoon in the House 14

Full Moon in Winter 15

Year Day 16

The Suitor 17

Now That We Live 18

Indolence in Early Winter 19

Evening at a Country Inn 20

Rain in January 21

Walking Alone in Late Winter 22

The Pond at Dusk 23

Photograph of a Child on a Vermont Hillside 24

What Came to Me 25

The Sandy Hole 26

February: Thinking of Flowers 27

Mud Season 28

Thinking of Madame Bovary 30

Camp Evergreen 31

The Appointment 32

Alone for a Week 33

The Bat 34

Travel: After a Death 35

Twilight: After Haying 37

Briefly It Enters, and Briefly Speaks 38

Things 40

Three Songs at the End of Summer 41

In the Grove: The Poet at Ten 43

The Pear 44

Small Early Valentine 45

The Blue Bowl 46

We Let the Boat Drift 47

April Chores 49

The Clearing 50

Private Beach 51

The Three Susans 53

Lines for Akhmatova 55

September Garden Party 56

Father and Son 57

Let Evening Come 58

August Rain, after Haying 59

The Stroller 60

The Argument 65

Biscuit 67

Not Writing 68

Having It Out with Melancholy 69

Chrysanthemums 74

Back 77

Moving the Frame 78

Not Here 79

In Memory of Jack 81

Insomnia at the Solstice 82

Peonies at Dusk 84

Three Small Oranges 85

Potato 86

Sleepers in Jaipur 87

Gettysburg: July 1, 1863 88

Pharaoh 90

Otherwise 91

Notes from the Other Side 92

Happiness 93

In the Nursing Home 95

Prognosis 96

Afternoon at MacDowell 97

Dutch Interiors 98

Reading Aloud to My Father 99

Woman, Why Are You Weeping? 100

The Sick Wife 105

Editorial Reviews

Amidst all of Jane Kenyon’s unyielding and absolute clarity . . . it’s easy to forget she was a visionary too, a mystic. . . . These poems seem to orbit a nucleus of ecstatic awareness, of self-surrender. . . . The systems Kenyon creates here feel open, sweeping, and endless, like water bending over a horizon.’”—Kaveh Akbar

“The poems of Jane Kenyon are lodestars. I can think of no better way to navigate life than to keep her work close, as I have always done. It’s thrilling to now have this great parting gift from Donald Hall—his loving, intimate, discerning selection of the best of her poems.”—Dani Shapiro

From the Publisher