Customer Reviews

Otherwise: New and Selected Poems

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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