A Hundred White Daffodils [Hardcover]

Jane Kenyon (Author), Donald Hall (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 15, 1999

"There is something in me that will not be snuffed out," Jane Kenyon told Bill Moyers in an interview. And there is no better proof of that than the overwhelming response her poetry generates. Kenyon's last collection, Otherwise: New & Selected Poems, remains a phenomenon: a best-seller that testifies to the impact Kenyon has had on the poetic landscape.

A Hundred White Daffodils is a companion volume that sheds illumination on a poet, and a woman, of great presence. It offers glimpses into a life cut too short and traces the influences that created Kenyon's poetic voice. The book includes Kenyon's translations of the great Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, and insights into how Kenyon chose her as a muse. It presents a variety of Kenyon's prose pieces about the writing life, her spiritual life, her country community, her gardens-- themes that readers will well remember from her poems. Transcripts of interviews provide further understanding as Kenyon faces her struggle with depression and the losses wrought by illness. Finally, there is an unfinished, visionary poem that makes one wonder what might have been if Kenyon had been given the chance to create more poetry.

Including an introduction by Kenyon's husband and fellow poet, Donald Hall, and a bibliography of her publications, A Hundred White Daffodils is a gift to all those devoted to Kenyon's poetry.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

As carefully culled and tended as the New England flower gardens that Kenyon, a poet who died of leukemia in 1995, wrote about with such bone-aching clarity, this collection of sundry, posthumous prose and poetry illuminates a little-known corner of her oeuvre. Kenyon's introduction to the Akhmatova translations is discouraging: she offers a tepid account of Akhmatova's life and ends with disclaimer upon disclaimer warning that Akhmatova's trademark "beautiful clarity" will be lost in her English renditions. What a thrill, then, to find such beauty and density of feeling in the skillfully controlled translations. Kenyon's sharply realized if understated short essays originally published in a local New Hampshire newspaper are also noteworthy; in them, she revisits the terrain of her poems, particularly such themes as religion, gardening and the regenerative force of nature. In the transcripts of Kenyon's interviews with Bill Moyers, David Bradt and Marian Blue, there is a determined poignancy. The woman who comes to life in these pages is witty, guileless, humble and heartbreakingly intelligent. One is left wanting more, as if continuing the interviews could restore this vibrant person to life. The final installment in this volume is the unfinished poem, "Woman Why Are You Weeping," startling in its deft foray into religious faith, Third-World crisis and race relations. Like much of Kenyon's work, it is at once irresistible and devastating. It is quite clear why the poet felt such kinship for Akhmatova, for she, too, has achieved a "beautiful clarity." (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

When Kenyon died of leukemia in 1995, colleagues and fans alike were left bereft. This posthumous collection includes short essays, interviews, a few of Kenyon's translations of the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, and one unfinished poem. Accessible, earnest, and devoid of urbane ironies, the essays focus mostly on either her small (New England) country community or her garden, examining her growing spiritual life and what it is to live while things are going on inside without one's knowledge or consent. Also covered are notions of writing, facing her own and her husband's bouts with cancer, and, in one of the interviews, a discussion of her struggle with depression. The book succeeds in illuminating a poet and woman of remarkable presence. Recommended for all libraries.AScott Hightower, Fordham Univ., New York
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 216 pages
• Publisher: Graywolf Press; 1 edition (September 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1555972918
• ISBN-13: 978-1555972912
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #379,189 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In her prose as in her poetry..., November 18, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: A Hundred White Daffodils (Hardcover)

Jane Kenyon is sorely missed; her volumes of published poetry are cherished members of my library. How wonderful to have now a collection of her translations and her occasional prose pieces. She was as observant and trenchant in essays about gardening or hiking as she was in her best verse; this collection is another chance to hear her voice once again. For all her fans, this volume is a must. For those who don't know her work, it might be a good introduction, and it will surely lead them to her published collections which, thankfully, remain in print. A warm tribute to a much-loved writer.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Treasure, August 27, 2000

By 

Nanci "Book Dragon" (Tri-Cities, WA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Hundred White Daffodils (Hardcover)

Jane Kenyon's poetry reawakened my muse and my love of poetry at a time in my life when I sorely needed it. I have read everything of hers I can get my hands on, and when I found this book I was thrilled. It is like sitting down in the living room with her. I always felt so close to her, like she was my friend, and this book almost makes that impossibility possible.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Life of a Poet, January 26, 2003

By 

Bruce P. Barten (Saint Paul, MN United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hundred White Daffodils (Paperback)

I originally picked this book up for the Akhmatova translations, but I found the interviews highly informative. Though I am not a published poet (in spite of describing myself as the most spaced out poet on the planet in a few reviews), I have been to Ann Arbor, Michigan and New Hampshire, and I was surprised with how similar some of our experiences have been. I have been to a writing workshop, so it was possible for me to follow the process by which she has shared and refined poems before attempting to have them published. I have also been to church and taken part in discussions in that context, and was not surprised that Jane Kenyon never found the courage to submit the final poem in the book, "Woman, Why Are You Weeping?" to that process. People don't usually talk about `apathy and bafflement' while "waiting/ for the bread and wine of Holy Communion" after having been to India. (pp. 205-09).

It would be awful for me to joke about the contents of this book, but I think I found a joke by Jane Kenyon in the article, "Poetry and the Mail," originally published in "The Concord Monitor," 16 August 1993. "All poets share one thing, however--a daily dependence on the mail. `It is joy, and it is pain,' as the great Russian poet Anna Akhmatova once said, though not about the mail." (p. 128). The poem itself, "Like a white stone in a deep well," (p. 16) is included in this book. Memory is mentioned in the second line, and in the final line of the poem, and must be what Anna Akhmatova was thinking about, or about "how the gods turned people/ into things, not killing their consciousness." (p. 16)

Most of the poems by Kenyon in this book show up in the Interview with Bill Moyers (1993). What I find most modern is the open discussion of depression, crept up on with a question about the melancholy of winter in the poem, "February: Thinking of Flowers." (p. 151). In a poem, "Having it Out with Melancholy," the second part starts with a list of pills that takes up three lines, and I would bet that none of them ever appeared in any book that Freud read. I like the poem "Otherwise" on pages 168-69. The last one in the Moyers interview was "Let Evening Come." (pp. 170-71). I suspect that most of the readers of this book will be serious poets. It is difficult to imagine another group who would be eager to contemplate an article like "The Physics of Long Sticks." The last paragraph of that article is devoted to the question, "Why can't people be more like dogs?" (p. 103).