Otherwise: New & Selected Poems [Paperback]

Jane Kenyon (Author), Donald E. Hall (Afterword)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 1997

Otherwise collects a lifetime's work by one of contemporary poetry's most cherished talents. Opening with twenty new poems and including generous selections from Jane Kenyon's four previous books—From Room to Room, The Boat of Quiet Hours, Let Evening Come, and Constance—this collection was selected and arranged by Kenyon herself—alongside her husband, the esteemed poet Donald Hall—shortly before her death in April 1995.

This extensive gathering reveals a scrupulously crafted body of work in which poem after poem achieves a rare and somber grace. Light and shade are never far apart in these telling narratives of life and love and work at the poet's rural New Hampshire home. The shadow of depression in Kenyon's verse, which grew much darker and longer at certain intervals, has the force and heft of a spiritual presence—a god, demon, angel. Yet her work emphasizes the constant effort of her imagination to confront and even find redemption in suffering. However quiet or domesticated or subtle in her moods and methods, Kenyon was a poet who sought to discover the extraordinary within the ordinary, and her poems continue to make this discovery. As Hall writes in the afterword to Otherwise, we share "her joy in the body and the creation, in flowers, music, and paintings, in hayfields and a dog."

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This collection stands as something of a tribute to Jane Kenyon, who died in 1995 at the age of 48. Otherwise contains 20 new poems plus selected works from her four previous collections. The situations from which her lively writing arise often came from her daily life in and around the New Hampshire farm where she lived with her husband. The simple settings provides fertile ground for her richness of language. "As late as yesterday ice preoccupied the pond--dark, half-melted, waterlogged. Then it sank in the night, one piece, taking winter with it. And afterward everything seems simple and good." Beautiful, gracious poetry. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Kenyon's poetry is honest and earnest, rich in imagery yet free of clutter. Always technically proficient, her early poems were not always memorable, but her questioning of the value of life has been consistent: "And I knew then/ that I would have to live, and go on/ living: what a sorrow it was...." ("Evening Sun," from her second collection, The Boat of Quiet Hours, 1986). Coming of age at a time when psychiatry often was a useful poet's appliance, Kenyon works her way through superficial gloom to expose a widely familiar sadness. Sorrow begins with childhood, the 10-year-old experiencing a joy "so violent/ it was hard to distinguish from pain." Kenyon died of leukemia in April 1995 at age 47. The poems in this volume, being published on the first anniversary of her death, were selected by the poet; her husband, poet Donald Hall, offers an afterword. New poems, gathered in the first section, focus with unsentimental, entirely credible directness on her pending death. In "Eating the Cookies," the poet cleans a closet while nibbling on cookies sent by a cousin: "...the largest cookie,/ which I had saved for last, lay/ solitary in the tin with a nimbus/ of crumbs around it. There would be no more/ parcels from Portland. I took it up/ and sniffed it, and before eating it,/ pressed it against my forehead, because/ it seemed like the next thing to do." This collection is generous, cohesive and moving.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 230 pages
• Publisher: Graywolf Press; 2nd Edition Revised & Enlarged edition (August 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1555972667
• ISBN-13: 978-1555972660
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.8 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #463,476 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Poetry for the human experience December 19, 2003

By April J. Brown

Format:Paperback

It was this anthology of poetry that transformed my mother from a woman who dislikes poetry to a woman who reads it every day. I read her one poem and got her hooked. Jane Kenyen speaks directly to her reader, using simple images and plain language, capturing experiences that often feel familiar and sometimes reminding us of their meaning and significance. This is not poetry that could be shouted at a poetry slam or puzzled over by scholars looking for allusions to Sanskrit texts. This is poetry about our lives, about burying the cat, ironing a tablecloth, saying goodbye to guests, winter weather, faith, sadness, and love. I love poetry, but sometimes it feels daunting and inaccessible. Jane Kenyon writes like I am her guest, sitting at her kitchen table, and she has a moment to share.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Elegant, captivating, an emotional sextant. December 4, 1996

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

Kenyon offers no elaborate rhyme schemes or obscure literary allusions,
just simple, graceful observations - of pain, love, disappointment,
affirmation. Magical, haunting, and precise, Kenyon stands alone.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Captivating and Honest March 10, 2000

By Marissa Seko

Format:Hardcover

I absolutely love this book. Jane Kenyon's poetry describes some of the most simple, daily activities in a way that brings out their hidden beauty and grace. You can sense the careful observation and truthfullness of what she describes, yet as you read you can interpret the symbolism behind certain passages and the realizations there aswell. I feel so deeply connected with this book. Her poetry speaks the words we cannot say. You won't regret buying this book.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Bright Stars on a Winter Night November 13, 2000

By Deborah Heeres

Format:Paperback

Jane Kenyon's OTHERWISE is perhaps the best collection of American poetry in the past decade. With her accessible and illuminating poems, Ms. Kenyon captures the essence of life in all its ordinariness and extraordinariness. "Let Evening Come," for example, is a nearly perfect gem -- thoughtful, concise, movingly eloquent. Throughout this collection, the poet demonstrates a remarkable clarity of vision; her diction and meter are gorgeous, her wit and insight profound yet never burdensome. Whether recalling a scene from her childhood, an hour in winter, a cancer treatment, a death in the family, or a walk with the dog, Ms. Kenyon inspires, illuminates, and entertains.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Spare and poignant October 26, 2011

By E. Strickenburg

Format:Hardcover

This moving collection of poetry was compiled during the last months of the Jane Kenyon's life, as she was battling leukemia. It contains selections from her previously published collections of poetry, as well as a number of new poems. The story of its compilation is told in the afterword, written by the poet's husband (former U.S. Poet Laureate Donald Hall). Crying while reading an afterword was a new experience for me.

The poetry itself is beautiful, and very accessible. The themes center around daily life. Sometimes it's the poignancy of the little things: the healing found by seeing sunlight on a warm rock, the solidarity with the past caused by finding an old thimble on the floor, the quiet joy of watching children at play. Other times it's the more difficult things: the visit to an elderly relative in a nursing home, the oppressive reality of a difficult prognosis, the rawness of a funeral. Her poems aren't often happy-go-lucky, but they're always tender and real.

Ms. Kenyon writes with spare simplicity and startling imagery. The majority of her poems are very readable, written in free verse without many complex structures. Here's a taste of her style:

The Suitor

We lie back to back. Curtains
lift and fall,
like the chest of someone sleeping.
Wind moves the leaves of the box elder;
they show their light undersides,
turning all at once
like a school of fish.
Suddenly I understand that I am happy.
For months this feeling
has been coming closer, stopping
for short visits, like a timid suitor.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars OMG--It gets better! December 13, 2009

By M. L. York

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I thought The Boat of Quiet Hours was the highest bar of poetry. Then came Otherwise. The cream at the top of the glass milk bottle.
Tree Swenson's cover design enhances the poetry and intrigues me with understated visuals.
Get ready for your heart to break open and grow if you buy this.
Thanks, Jane, for leaving us with this book.

14 of 25 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars The Struggle and Beauty of Living August 11, 1998

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

Jane Kenyon's poems show a keen observation of everyday detail -- "the luminous particular," as her husband Donald Hall puts it -- with a muted level of emotion. A typical poem in this ample collection meanders through several fine images, then pulls them together at the end with a description of mood or a realization. Kenyon is especially fond of the smell of wet earth, the sound of rain, and images of water. In general, her images are much more successful than her similes. Some of her beautiful phrases are reminiscent of traditional Chinese poetry: "...the water...stares back at the moon from its cool terra-cotta urn"; of Sharon Olds: "Not dark enough, not the utter darkness he desired"; and of Anna Akhmatova, whom she translated from the Russian, cf. Kenyon's poem "The Appointment." In the poem "Trouble with Math..." an incident about undeserved punishment ends with, "She led me, blinking and changed, back to! the class." -- Changed in what way? The author's language is spare and delicate, but sometimes the point gets lost. The overall impression is that the author was straining toward happiness, and she made the most of the occasional window of opportunity allowed her by illness. I found the book pleasant to read, but when it was once closed, very little remained with me. This author does not have the same clarity and robustness as, say, Luise Gluck, another poet who suffered from depression. But I did find Jane Kenyon poignant and alive when she spoke directly about her experience of illness, e.g. when she says, "I'm falling upward, nothing to hold me down."