Collected Poems (Paperback)

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Key Phrases: Main Street, Osip Mandelstam, Vera Sandomirsky Dunham

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 The Washington Post

Jane Kenyon's collection Otherwise: New & Selected Poems was published in 1996, less than a year after the poet's death at 47 from leukemia. The poems were selected by the poet during the last days of her life. Her husband, Donald Hall, an institution in American letters himself, wrote poignantly of this process in the afterword of Otherwise and at greater length in his memoir The Best Day The Worst Day: Life with Jane Kenyon.

With 60,000 copies in print, Otherwise has become a phenomenon in American poetry publishing, and Kenyon belongs on a short list of contemporary poets whose work sustains readers who do not usually turn to poetry. It is no wonder her work has inspired genuine affection among so many; Kenyon's poems cultivate a warm, familiar voice that invites the reader into the pains and pleasures of everyday life with an honest and engaging intimacy.

Now, at the 10-year anniversary of her death, Kenyon's Collected Poems brings all of her published poetry together in one volume. Given the abiding strength and impact of Otherwise, it would be easy to argue against the need for this new book. Not counting Kenyon's translations from Twenty Poems of Anna Akhmatova, only 35 poems have been added to those in Otherwise, and, with just a few exceptions -- "Climb" from the 1993 collection, Constance, and the unfinished poem "Woman, Why Are You Weeping?" are standouts -- the additional poems do not much change our understanding of Kenyon's accomplishments or the direction she might have gone had she lived longer.

Still, as Otherwise stands as a memorial to the writer's life, Collected Poems is a celebration of the journey the poet took in the development of that life. The new collection follows Kenyon from her first book, From Room to Room, published in 1978, through the last poem she started after her illness had advanced, "The Sick Wife." By reconstructing Kenyon's books in their published versions, Collected Poems provides a complete picture of the poet becoming more confident in her craft and expanding the ambitions of her work.

Kenyon's struggles with depression throughout her life are well-known, and her work is as important to any understanding of contemporary poetry on this subject as William Styron's Darkness Visible is to prose literature. In "Depression in Winter," she describes a walk through snow as "throwing myself forward with a violence/ of effort, greedy for unhappiness," and in "Evening Sun," a memory of childhood becomes the impetus to re-experience the realization "that I would have to live, and go on/ living: what a sorrow it was; and still/ what sorrow burns/ but does not destroy my heart." The perseverance against the despair Kenyon writes about is an unending battle, and the forthrightness with which she took this up in her poems will continue to resonate with readers. "Having It Out with Melancholy," her most ambitious poem on the subject, calls out this "anti-urge,/ the mutilator of souls," and through the litany of pharmaceuticals, the respite of sleep and the dog -- "Sometimes the sound of his breathing/ saves my life" -- she finds the fleeting peace to celebrate birdsong, "overcome/ by ordinary contentment."

The mind is not her only subject. Bodily concerns appear in all of Kenyon's books. In the early poem "Cages," the corporeal world takes its shape first in a "dead beagle" and then through "animals in cages," which leads to the question, "And the body, what about the body?" There is no easy answer -- "Sometimes it is my favorite child," "And sometimes my body disgusts me." The speaker can only reach this conclusion:

Then I have to agree that the body
is a cloud before the soul's eye.
This long struggle to be at home
in the body, this difficult friendship.

In "Winter Lambs," a friend's unplanned pregnancy leads to this declaration: "We are creation's/ property, its particles, its clay/ as we fall into this life,/ agree or disagree." The physical and metaphysical are inescapable elements that Kenyon returned to often in her work.

Then there are the heart-rending poems of loss and letting go. With these powerful opening lines, "In the Nursing Home" belongs among the finest lyrics of the last half-century:

She is like a horse grazing
a hill pasture that someone makes
smaller by coming every night
to pull the fences in and in.

Again and again, Kenyon confronts the unbearable nature of loss and puts forward her belief that "Searching for God is the first thing and the last,/ but in between such trouble, and such pain."

Kenyon's introduction to and translations (with Vera Sandomirsky Dunham) of Twenty Poems of Anna Akhmatova may seem an odd way to close Collected Poems, but it is hard to imagine the incantatory beauty of "Let Evening Come" or the stoic lyricism of "August Rain, After Haying" without this influence. And there is something fitting about Collected Poems closing with the words Kenyon chose to end her poem "Lines for Akhmatova": "I can't tell/ if the day is ending, or the world,/ or if the secret of secrets is within me again."

Otherwise will deservedly continue to bring new readers to Kenyon's work, but if you already find Kenyon a vital and essential poet, buy this Collected Poems and give your copy of Otherwise to someone you care about to help keep Kenyon's spirit alive.

Reviewed by Jon Tribble
Copyright 2005, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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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 (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #223,564 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

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

By	kjgrow (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Collected Poems (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.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Simplicity, September 13, 2005

By	Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Collected Poems (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

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

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

By	J. Kelleher "J." - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Collected Poems (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.