Collected Poems [Paperback]

Jane Kenyon (Author)

Book Description

Release date: September 4, 2007

All of Jane Kenyon's published poems gathered in one definitive collection, now in paperback

Yes, long shadows go out
from the bales; and yes, the soul
must part from the body:
what else could it do?
--from "Twilight: After Haying"

 

Jane Kenyon is one of America's most prized contemporary poets. Her previous collection, Otherwise: New and Selected Poems, published just after her death in 1995, has been a favorite among readers, with more than 80,000 copies in print, and is a contemporary classic.

Collected Poems assembles all of Kenyon's published poetry in one book. Included here are the complete poems found in her four previous volumes--From Room to Room, The Boat of Quiet Hours, Let Evening Come, and Constance--as well as the poems that appear in her posthumous volumes Otherwise and A Hundred White Daffodils, four poems never before published in book form, and her translations in Twenty Poems of Anna Akhmatova.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In the 10 years since Jane Kenyon's death at the age of 47, her reputation has only grown. Her books are assigned; her life has been memorialized by husband Donald Hall in the book-length elegy Without (1998) and The Best Day the Worst Day: Life with Jane Kenyon, a memoir out just last month from Houghton (Reviews, Mar. 7). This collected edition reproduces verbatim the four books Kenyon saw through to press; the poems from two posthumous collections, Otherwise and A Hundred White Daffodils; Kenyon's translations of Akhmatova; and four previously uncollected poems. It's a case of more being less: gems like "Let Evening Come," "Otherwise" and "Briefly It Enters, and Briefly Speaks" feel a little hidden here, despite Kenyon's careful composition and ordering of her work. The selected Otherwise will remain the Kenyon standard, but fans will be glad to have everything portable and in one place. Kenyon's struggles with depression are central to her work; taken as a whole, Kenyon's poems remain a sustaining record of a life staked out in very difficult terrain.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

The sixteenth-century sonnet allowed some self-disclosure in the context of courtly love, and romanticism licensed philosophical autobiography, as in Wordsworth's Prelude. But the intimate, even offensive soul-and-body--baring the mid-twentieth-century confessional poets (Robert Lowell is the most famous) introduced was unprecedented; Rimbaud had been more discreet. Every literary convention produces masterpieces, however, and Kenyon's self-exposition in Otherwise (1996), the big selection of her verse made with the help of her husband, Donald Hall, just before her death, is one. Of course, though often painful, it is hardly offensive. Kenyon suffered severe depression throughout her adult life, and her poems convey the disease's oppressiveness with humbling power. During her 20 years with Hall, she also found consolation in love and in rural New England's natural beauty; she movingly communicates that, too. This book presents Kenyon's four earlier collections, the poems new to Otherwise, and five gathered from other publications in their original order of book publication. It is no replacement for Otherwise, but that book's admirers will be grateful for its restoration of the masterpiece's context. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Graywolf Press (September 4, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1555974783
• ISBN-13: 978-1555974787
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #79,244 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Ferociously beautiful, silence itself January 2, 2006

By kjgrow

Format:Hardcover

In his American Poetry Review profile of Jane Kenyon, Liam Rector identifies two attributes of the poet that I found particularly striking and that stayed with me while reading this wonderful collection. He writes that "Jane was one of those women who became ferociously beautiful in middle age" and that she, in comparison to others in their literary circles, was "silence itself."

To read Jane Kenyon in this collected and chronological format is such a joy, as her work is intensely personal. Coming to the end, the reader feels as if a life has been shared, one that is simple yet so rich, gratefully and gracefully lived, always acutely aware. She writes about her marriage, her illness, her husband's cancer, her friends, her home, her depression, her travels, her world. There is an element of domesticity and femininity in Jane Kenyon's verse - she can make hanging out a line of laundry seem like an act of worship - but the overriding motivation is quiet observation, giving pause and space for those lovely transient moments, whispered failings, private joys, intimate discoveries.

This is a lovely book and will be a treasured collection for years.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Simplicity September 13, 2005

By Grady Harp HALL OF FAMETOP 50 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Jane Kenyon has become a posthumous icon of a poet. Much of her public awareness is due to the incredible devotion to her and her gifts as a writer by her husband, fellow poet and writer Donald Hall. Their 23-year marriage will doubtless go down in literary history as one of the more mutually inspiring relationships in poetry. Their life in New England didn't end with Jane Kenyon's death from leukemia in 1995 at age 47: Donald Hall has memorialized her rare gifts in posthumous publication s of her works. In his words 'With rare exceptions, we remained aware of each other's feelings. It took me half my life, more than half, to discover with Jane's guidance that two people could live together and remain kind.'

Jane Kenyon's poems celebrate the plain things our eyes edit if we diminish our sensitivity. She makes us aware of the common parcels of beauty that fill the world, that elevate the spirit. Her own episodes of depression, fought valiantly through periods of failed bone marrow transplant, in response to her husband's encounter with colon cancer - all can be traced to certain passages, but ever with the ability to see light from the coming horizon. She examines the plain, avoids trite emotion, and reveals the sanctity of each atom our minds can embrace if we remain always receptive.

This is a magnificent book of fine poetry. It is exquisitely written: it is inspirational. Highly recommended. Grady Harp, September 05

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars You won't need much more..... September 13, 2005

By J. Kelleher

Format:Hardcover

Many families have a book or two that have an exalted place in the home - the Bible, the OED, an old scrapbook or a favourite Little Golden Book. Jane Kenyon's Collected Poems will be the volume that will be in my home, to be read, cherished and passed on to my children. It sits with me while I watch Red Sox games or drink a glass of Eberle cabernet. There are few books greater than this one.