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Otherwise: New and Selected Poems
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."
230 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 1996
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About the author
Jane Kenyon
21 books104 followersJane Kenyon was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and earned both her BA and MA from the University of Michigan. While a student at the University of Michigan Kenyon met her future husband, the poet Donald Hall, who taught there. After her marriage, Kenyon moved with Hall to Eagle Pond Farm, a New Hampshire farm that had been in Hall’s family for generations.
Kenyon published four volumes of poetry during her life: From Room to Room (1978), The Boat of Quiet Hours (1986), Let Evening Come (1990), and Constance (1993), and, as translator, Twenty Poems of Anna Akmatova (1985). Despite her relatively small output, her poetry was highly lauded by critics throughout her lifetime. As fellow poet Carol Muske remarked in the New York Times when describing Kenyon’s The Boat of Quiet Hours, “These poems surprise beauty at every turn and capture truth at its familiar New England slant. Here, in Keats’s terms, is a capable poet.” Indeed, Kenyon’s work has often been compared with that of English Romantic poet John Keats; in an essay on Kenyon for Contemporary Women Poets, Gary Roberts dubbed her a “Keatsian poet” and noted that, “like Keats, she attempts to redeem morbidity with a peculiar kind of gusto, one which seeks a quiet annihilation of self-identity through identification with benign things.”
The cycles of nature held special significance for Kenyon, who returned to them again and again, both in her variations on Keats’s ode “To Autumn,” and in other pastoral verse. In Let Evening Come, her third published collection—and one that found the poet taking what Poetry essayist Paul Breslin called “a darker turn”—Kenyon explored nature’s cycles in other ways: the fall of light from day to dusk to night, and the cycles of relationships with family and friends throughout a long span of years brought to a close by death. Let Evening Come “shows [Kenyon] at the height of her powers,” according to Muske in a review of the 1990 volume for the New York Times Book Review, with the poet’s “descriptive skills… as notable as her dramatic ones. Her rendering of natural settings, in lines of well-judged rhythm and simple syntax, contribute to the [volume’s] memorableness.”
Constance began Kenyon’s study of depression, and her work in this regard has been compared with that of the late poet Sylvia Plath. Comparing the two, Breslin wrote that “Kenyon’s language is much quieter, less self-dramatizing” than that of Plath, and where the earlier poet “would give herself up, writing her lyrical surrender to oblivion,… Kenyon fought to the end.” Breslin noted the absence of self-pity in Kenyon’s work, and the poet’s ability to separate from self and acknowledge the grief and emotional pain of others, as in her poems “Coats,” “Sleepers in Jaipur,” and “Gettysburg: July 1, 1863,” which imagines a mortally wounded soldier lying in wait for death on the historic battlefield.
New Hampshire’s poet laureate at the time of her untimely death at age forty-seven, Kenyon’s verse probed the inner psyche, particularly with regard to her own battle against depression. Writing for the last two decades of her life at her farm in northern New England, Kenyon is also remembered for her stoic portraits of domestic and rural life; as Gary Roberts noted, her poetry was “acutely faithful to the familiarities and mysteries of home life, and it is distinguished by intense calmness in the face of routine disappointments and tragedies.”
In Otherwise: New and Selected Poems (1996), a posthumous collection containing twenty poems written just prior to her death as well as several taken from her earlier books, Kenyon “chronicles the uncertainty of living as culpable, temporary creatures,” according to Nation contributor Emily Gordon. As Muske added in the New York Times Book Review, Kenyon avoids sentimentality throughout Otherwise. “The poet here sears a housewife’
Kenyon published four volumes of poetry during her life: From Room to Room (1978), The Boat of Quiet Hours (1986), Let Evening Come (1990), and Constance (1993), and, as translator, Twenty Poems of Anna Akmatova (1985). Despite her relatively small output, her poetry was highly lauded by critics throughout her lifetime. As fellow poet Carol Muske remarked in the New York Times when describing Kenyon’s The Boat of Quiet Hours, “These poems surprise beauty at every turn and capture truth at its familiar New England slant. Here, in Keats’s terms, is a capable poet.” Indeed, Kenyon’s work has often been compared with that of English Romantic poet John Keats; in an essay on Kenyon for Contemporary Women Poets, Gary Roberts dubbed her a “Keatsian poet” and noted that, “like Keats, she attempts to redeem morbidity with a peculiar kind of gusto, one which seeks a quiet annihilation of self-identity through identification with benign things.”
The cycles of nature held special significance for Kenyon, who returned to them again and again, both in her variations on Keats’s ode “To Autumn,” and in other pastoral verse. In Let Evening Come, her third published collection—and one that found the poet taking what Poetry essayist Paul Breslin called “a darker turn”—Kenyon explored nature’s cycles in other ways: the fall of light from day to dusk to night, and the cycles of relationships with family and friends throughout a long span of years brought to a close by death. Let Evening Come “shows [Kenyon] at the height of her powers,” according to Muske in a review of the 1990 volume for the New York Times Book Review, with the poet’s “descriptive skills… as notable as her dramatic ones. Her rendering of natural settings, in lines of well-judged rhythm and simple syntax, contribute to the [volume’s] memorableness.”
Constance began Kenyon’s study of depression, and her work in this regard has been compared with that of the late poet Sylvia Plath. Comparing the two, Breslin wrote that “Kenyon’s language is much quieter, less self-dramatizing” than that of Plath, and where the earlier poet “would give herself up, writing her lyrical surrender to oblivion,… Kenyon fought to the end.” Breslin noted the absence of self-pity in Kenyon’s work, and the poet’s ability to separate from self and acknowledge the grief and emotional pain of others, as in her poems “Coats,” “Sleepers in Jaipur,” and “Gettysburg: July 1, 1863,” which imagines a mortally wounded soldier lying in wait for death on the historic battlefield.
New Hampshire’s poet laureate at the time of her untimely death at age forty-seven, Kenyon’s verse probed the inner psyche, particularly with regard to her own battle against depression. Writing for the last two decades of her life at her farm in northern New England, Kenyon is also remembered for her stoic portraits of domestic and rural life; as Gary Roberts noted, her poetry was “acutely faithful to the familiarities and mysteries of home life, and it is distinguished by intense calmness in the face of routine disappointments and tragedies.”
In Otherwise: New and Selected Poems (1996), a posthumous collection containing twenty poems written just prior to her death as well as several taken from her earlier books, Kenyon “chronicles the uncertainty of living as culpable, temporary creatures,” according to Nation contributor Emily Gordon. As Muske added in the New York Times Book Review, Kenyon avoids sentimentality throughout Otherwise. “The poet here sears a housewife’
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 131 reviews
July 2, 2008
This book is a classic. A poignant and well-crafted book. I often use Kenyon's poems as examples of emotion, understatement, and accessibility. The old "show, don't tell" rule. She is a master at it and pulls the reader smack in the middle of her experience.
October 10, 2023
I loved her poetry and sometimes wonder why I’m living in a city and not in a small house by a lake watching the world slowly move through its cycles.
Apple Dropping Into Deep Early Snow
A jay settled on a branch, making it sway.
The one shriveled fruit that remained
gave way to the deepening drift below.
I happened to see it the moment it fell.
Dusk is eager and comes early. A car
creeps over the hill. Still in the dark I try
to tell if I am numbered with the damned,
Who cry, outraged, Lord, when did we see You?
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.
Apple Dropping Into Deep Early Snow
A jay settled on a branch, making it sway.
The one shriveled fruit that remained
gave way to the deepening drift below.
I happened to see it the moment it fell.
Dusk is eager and comes early. A car
creeps over the hill. Still in the dark I try
to tell if I am numbered with the damned,
Who cry, outraged, Lord, when did we see You?
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.
August 14, 2025
quite perfect 💗💗💗 perhaps my fave poetry collection of the year
December 26, 2009
Kenyon's book of selected poems was my unlikely companion on our flights to and from Pittsburgh over Christmas--unlikely because I usually prefer fiction on planes. But I loved the strange feeling of sinking into her white space and into the hush of her northeastern imagery--the nuthatch spiraling down the tree, the laundry (yes, always), the unused barn with a moon peeking around it, the way the day looks through the eyes of someone struggling with depression and illness and quiet loss.
All the while, Mike and I moved from gate to gate, boarded and unboarded our jets.
Her husband Donald Hall writes the brief afterword, explaining that she died so young (age 48) from leukemia and remarking, "Her poetry gathered resonance and beauty as she studied the art of the luminous particular. 'The natural object'--she liked to quote Pound--'is always the adequate symbol.'"
"Luminous particular" seems a perfect phrase for these poems, especially the series that has the simplest of objects for titles: thimble, needle, shirt...
Every poem doesn't strike me, but a few are amazing and I think the whole collection shines softly.
Here's one I love for the way it captures what it feels like for a writer to not be writing:
NOT WRITING
A wasp rises to its papery
nest under the eaves
where it daubs
at the gray shape,
but seems unable
to enter its own house.
All the while, Mike and I moved from gate to gate, boarded and unboarded our jets.
Her husband Donald Hall writes the brief afterword, explaining that she died so young (age 48) from leukemia and remarking, "Her poetry gathered resonance and beauty as she studied the art of the luminous particular. 'The natural object'--she liked to quote Pound--'is always the adequate symbol.'"
"Luminous particular" seems a perfect phrase for these poems, especially the series that has the simplest of objects for titles: thimble, needle, shirt...
Every poem doesn't strike me, but a few are amazing and I think the whole collection shines softly.
Here's one I love for the way it captures what it feels like for a writer to not be writing:
NOT WRITING
A wasp rises to its papery
nest under the eaves
where it daubs
at the gray shape,
but seems unable
to enter its own house.
March 20, 2016
Touching. I loved the poems about campers at the lake. So much loss in this book - and many peonies. Also my favorite flower
October 31, 2024
Jane Kenyon is one of those famous poets that I’m often getting compared to, so I finally decided to check out her work. I had to make it halfway through the collection, all the way to the poems from Let Evening Come, before I understood at all. (Or before I found much to interest me, to be perfectly honest.) There started to be some poems about the simple pleasures of country life, poems I wished I’d written, and all of a sudden the comparisons made sense. Of course, I’m no Jane Kenyon, but on the other hand, I’ve already outlived her, so maybe I’ll keep growing as a writer and come closer to her example.
That was the other reason why I was able to identify with her. Kenyon struggled to find the energy to write throughout her life, first because of depression and then because of the leukemia that killed her at age 47. Although my specific ailments are different than hers, in the last few years I’ve also learned what it is to step on the gas and realize there’s nothing left in the tank, that I’m simply coasting on fumes. This is so humbling, and I never get used to it no matter how many times it happens. The last poem in the collection, “The Sick Wife,” really spoke to me. (You can read it here.)
That was the other reason why I was able to identify with her. Kenyon struggled to find the energy to write throughout her life, first because of depression and then because of the leukemia that killed her at age 47. Although my specific ailments are different than hers, in the last few years I’ve also learned what it is to step on the gas and realize there’s nothing left in the tank, that I’m simply coasting on fumes. This is so humbling, and I never get used to it no matter how many times it happens. The last poem in the collection, “The Sick Wife,” really spoke to me. (You can read it here.)
June 4, 2022
This is truly an A+ selection of poems! I was blown away. I only knew a couple of her poems before starting this book and was shocked to find so much brilliance.
“What she felt then would, like heavy wind and rain, bring any open flower to the ground.”
“Now tell me that the Holy Ghost does not reside in the play of light on cutlery!”
“How much better it is to carry wood to the fire than to moan about your life. How much better to throw the garbage onto the compost, or to pin the clean sheet on the line with a gray-brown wooden clothes pin!”
“What she felt then would, like heavy wind and rain, bring any open flower to the ground.”
“Now tell me that the Holy Ghost does not reside in the play of light on cutlery!”
“How much better it is to carry wood to the fire than to moan about your life. How much better to throw the garbage onto the compost, or to pin the clean sheet on the line with a gray-brown wooden clothes pin!”
December 15, 2019
This was exquisite. I'm sad that Kenyon only wrote 4 collections before she died, but my god her poetry is exquisite. The way she writes about melancholy, a walk through nature, or even the perfect pleasure of a simple yet beautiful day. Loved this so very much.
October 27, 2024
I like some of Kenyon's poems, but after reading this collection, my overall sense is of her sadness, and in many of the poems about life with Donald Hall in his family homestead and on Eagle Pond, I feel she is forcing appreciation of the nature and culture of this place rather than truly being of it.
I'm sorry she died so young and wonder what her life and poetry would have been like if she had lived a longer life.
I'm sorry she died so young and wonder what her life and poetry would have been like if she had lived a longer life.
October 15, 2018
A reminder that the thing in itself is a perfectly adequate symbol, as Donald Hall might say.
April 12, 2013
I appreciated learning about Jane Kenyon's life and reading through a large representation of her work, but I just couldn't get into the majority of her poems. Which was weird, because I saw a lot of my personal style reflected here, but we both have a problem with creating universal poetry, poetry that speaks to an audience larger than ourselves. Too many personal references, I think is the problem, although I'm not entirely sure.
The poem that enticed me to seek out the rest of her work was "Let Evening Come", a superb poem featured in one of the poetry anthologies I read earlier this year. That's probably my favorite piece of hers, although I also appreciated her poems about depression.
The poem that enticed me to seek out the rest of her work was "Let Evening Come", a superb poem featured in one of the poetry anthologies I read earlier this year. That's probably my favorite piece of hers, although I also appreciated her poems about depression.
February 1, 2016
I read this after reading Donald Hall's book "Without" about his life with Jane Kenyon and her illness, having only read her earliest book of poems beforehand. As such, I felt a bit like I had an insight to her when reading her poems that one doesn't always have. In the end, though, few poems resonated with me. Perhaps because I didn't tend to like her style, her line breaks, and some of the depression that bled out onto the page of too many poems. I like wistfulness, poignancy, not depression, which perhaps I felt more keenly having read this after Hall's book. Others may love her poems, which I can completely understand; she does capture moments well. Some images of small-town life, or just life in general, are wonderful. For me, though, in general, it just wasn't my type of poetry.
August 18, 2009
I only recently discovered Jane Kenyon, but her poetry is somewhat haunting in its description of depression and everyday life.
At the same time, she will never be one of my very favorite poets because overall, her poems are hit or miss. But the title poem is really amazing, as are a couple others in this collection, and the ones that are "hits" are really, really good.
At the same time, she will never be one of my very favorite poets because overall, her poems are hit or miss. But the title poem is really amazing, as are a couple others in this collection, and the ones that are "hits" are really, really good.
November 11, 2007
I love Kenyon. She's fabulous at what she does, although she sometimes seems unable to break out of "what she does" and occassionally succumbs to lesser instincts (as in "The Shirt"). Still, her poetry is poignant and full of wonderful imagery. Five stars for the good stuff.
October 21, 2019
This is just so damn good.
December 5, 2012
I love Jane. Days seem better when I know I can pick up her work
December 9, 2020
I recognized some of my own kind of thinking here:
Looking back on seeing him that time, not knowing—until later—that it was the last time.
Pulling down wallpaper in the basement and thinking back to the day the previous owners put it up.
Quotes (unformatted)
"unmerciful hours of your despair" (3)
"to the wineglass, weary of holding wine" (3)
"Not dark enough, not the utter darkness he desired." (6)
"But I 'follow too much the devices and desires of my own heart.'" ( 27)
"I feel my life start up again, like a cutting when it grows the first pale and tentative root hair in the glass of water." (27)
"I feel my life added to theirs." (32)
"How much better it is to carry wood to the fire than it is to moan about your life." (36)
"even so, I'm frightened, sitting in the middle of perfect possibility" (47)
"and my own shadow lies down in the cold at my feet, lunatic, like someone tired of living in a body, needy and full of desire" (48)
"Here are the gestures of my hands. Wear them in your hair." (49)
"Suddenly I understand that I am happy." (50)
"greedy for unhappiness" (68)
"The most painful longing comes over me. A longing not of the body [...] some condition even more extreme, which I intuit, but can't quite name." (70)
"So it is when we retreat in anger: we think we burn alone and there is no balm. Then water enters, though it makes no sound." (86)
"Now it is high summer: the solstice: longed-for, possessed, luxurious, and sad." (92)
"If you had turned into the drive just then, even with cheerful news, I doubt I could have heard what you had to say." (93)
"delicate sadness of dusk" (103)
"Oh, when am I going to own my mind again?" (108)
"With a patience that came like grace" (123)
"Nothing could rouse her then from that joy so violent it was hard to distinguish from pain." (124)
"If it's darkness we're having, let it be extravagant." (128)
"At dinner I laughed with the rest, but in truth I prefer the sound of pages turning" (131)
"I miss you steadily, painfully." (153)
"From my lap or your hand the spice of our morning's privacy comes drifting up." (154)
"...like a terrible thought has never entirely disappeared" (156)
"my disordered soul thirsts after something it cannot name" (181)
"For a few moments, I floated, completely calm, and I no longer hated having to exist. Like a crow who smells hot blood you came flying to pull me out of the glowing stream. [...] After that, I wept for days." (191)
"What hurt me so terribly all my life until this moment?" (193)
Looking back on seeing him that time, not knowing—until later—that it was the last time.
Pulling down wallpaper in the basement and thinking back to the day the previous owners put it up.
Quotes (unformatted)
"unmerciful hours of your despair" (3)
"to the wineglass, weary of holding wine" (3)
"Not dark enough, not the utter darkness he desired." (6)
"But I 'follow too much the devices and desires of my own heart.'" ( 27)
"I feel my life start up again, like a cutting when it grows the first pale and tentative root hair in the glass of water." (27)
"I feel my life added to theirs." (32)
"How much better it is to carry wood to the fire than it is to moan about your life." (36)
"even so, I'm frightened, sitting in the middle of perfect possibility" (47)
"and my own shadow lies down in the cold at my feet, lunatic, like someone tired of living in a body, needy and full of desire" (48)
"Here are the gestures of my hands. Wear them in your hair." (49)
"Suddenly I understand that I am happy." (50)
"greedy for unhappiness" (68)
"The most painful longing comes over me. A longing not of the body [...] some condition even more extreme, which I intuit, but can't quite name." (70)
"So it is when we retreat in anger: we think we burn alone and there is no balm. Then water enters, though it makes no sound." (86)
"Now it is high summer: the solstice: longed-for, possessed, luxurious, and sad." (92)
"If you had turned into the drive just then, even with cheerful news, I doubt I could have heard what you had to say." (93)
"delicate sadness of dusk" (103)
"Oh, when am I going to own my mind again?" (108)
"With a patience that came like grace" (123)
"Nothing could rouse her then from that joy so violent it was hard to distinguish from pain." (124)
"If it's darkness we're having, let it be extravagant." (128)
"At dinner I laughed with the rest, but in truth I prefer the sound of pages turning" (131)
"I miss you steadily, painfully." (153)
"From my lap or your hand the spice of our morning's privacy comes drifting up." (154)
"...like a terrible thought has never entirely disappeared" (156)
"my disordered soul thirsts after something it cannot name" (181)
"For a few moments, I floated, completely calm, and I no longer hated having to exist. Like a crow who smells hot blood you came flying to pull me out of the glowing stream. [...] After that, I wept for days." (191)
"What hurt me so terribly all my life until this moment?" (193)
Read
October 24, 2024Her poetics revolves around the material world:
But if you turn toward the material world to avoid the mental world, thought seeps through (let's play the old game "try not to think of a pink elephant"). In my favorite poems of hers, this seepage becomes an exchange: the speaker's mind affects what she sees, and what the speaker sees affects her mind. Given that this sort of exchange is how human perception fundamentally works (or at least how my perception works), creating poetry that enacts the exchange seems simple. Then why aren't more people doing it? Maybe it's hard, or maybe most poets prefer the drama of an imposing, adversarial, or submissive relationship to the real world (reality as something to shape, to defy, or to worship, not as something with which to connect or converse). The latter possibility seems very American—individualism tells us that meaning comes first from our boundedness, not our connection. No surprise that Kenyon's early influences were Chinese poets. See what she ended up with:
Or, about a dying soldier:
The blooming things need not be only the flowers; the streak of sun need not be only the sun—reality, here, carries human thought (in the first excerpt, reflections on the vulnerability brought by thriving, perhaps; in the second, beliefs about where the soul goes after death).
And so she does not record or announce; she observes. There's a sense, in such observation, of transcendent truth: we notice, with the poet, a world that moves in accord with our minds; the poetry operates with the credibility of that world, even as it affirms parts of our minds. Kenyon loses this effect when she moves too far into announcing (repeated similes that rather obviously impose meaning on the world were a proclivity of hers in her first book; once she pared them down, however, her similes became a strength). But her poems that achieve a fluid relationship with the world stand as subtle but resolute examples of another way to live.
How much better it is
to carry wood to the fire
than to moan about your life.
But if you turn toward the material world to avoid the mental world, thought seeps through (let's play the old game "try not to think of a pink elephant"). In my favorite poems of hers, this seepage becomes an exchange: the speaker's mind affects what she sees, and what the speaker sees affects her mind. Given that this sort of exchange is how human perception fundamentally works (or at least how my perception works), creating poetry that enacts the exchange seems simple. Then why aren't more people doing it? Maybe it's hard, or maybe most poets prefer the drama of an imposing, adversarial, or submissive relationship to the real world (reality as something to shape, to defy, or to worship, not as something with which to connect or converse). The latter possibility seems very American—individualism tells us that meaning comes first from our boundedness, not our connection. No surprise that Kenyon's early influences were Chinese poets. See what she ended up with:
Everything blooming bows down in the rain:
white irises, red peonies; and the poppies
with their black and secret centers
lie shattered on the lawn.
Or, about a dying soldier:
a sharp, almost sweet
smell began to rise from his open mouth
in the warm shade of the oaks.
A streak of sun climbed the rough
trunk of a tree, but he did not
see it with his open eye.
The blooming things need not be only the flowers; the streak of sun need not be only the sun—reality, here, carries human thought (in the first excerpt, reflections on the vulnerability brought by thriving, perhaps; in the second, beliefs about where the soul goes after death).
And so she does not record or announce; she observes. There's a sense, in such observation, of transcendent truth: we notice, with the poet, a world that moves in accord with our minds; the poetry operates with the credibility of that world, even as it affirms parts of our minds. Kenyon loses this effect when she moves too far into announcing (repeated similes that rather obviously impose meaning on the world were a proclivity of hers in her first book; once she pared them down, however, her similes became a strength). But her poems that achieve a fluid relationship with the world stand as subtle but resolute examples of another way to live.
July 12, 2022
In the brief Afterword of Otherwise, the poet's husband and fellow poet Donald Hall, told of Jane Kenyon's life, her illness, her work assembling this book (published posthumously), and her death. He describes her working style and her growth as a poet, claiming "Her poetry gathered resonance and beauty as she studied the art of the luminous particular."
That phrase, "the art of the luminous particular," coined by Kenyon herself, describes the unique quality infusing Kenyon's poems collected in this book. It is a book about very specific moments, brief observations of the natural world and of the human condition, often turning on a luminous image ... outrageous peonies the size of human heads, "the poppies with their black and secret centers" that lie "shattered on the lawn" under the heavy summer rain that mirrors the poet's "missing you steadily, painfully" mood. In "Gettysburg: July 1, 1863," Kenyon captures the death of a soldier with the precision and finality of Emily Dickinson's "I Heard a Fly Buzz," and also from the inside. One soldier, one specific day, luminous images.
Although much longer than the three simple lines of haiku, Kenyon's poems share with that briefer form that eye for detail and the ability to juxtapose seemingly dissimilar things to create a jolt of recognition of their underlying connection. In that she is like the metaphysical poets with their principle of universal analogy. All things are connected.
Another key element of Kenyon's poems is her chronicling of the simple events of country life ... the church rummage sale, a visit to the store in town, the birthing of lambs, working in the garden, taking the dog for a walk ... and of family milestones ... the illnesses and deaths of loved ones, the moving of a parent from the family home, the sale of possessions, the memories inspired by old photos and objects.
Taken together, the poems that comprise Otherwise, a mix of melancholy and joy, of the particular and the universal, are well worth reading. It is quite the legacy.
That phrase, "the art of the luminous particular," coined by Kenyon herself, describes the unique quality infusing Kenyon's poems collected in this book. It is a book about very specific moments, brief observations of the natural world and of the human condition, often turning on a luminous image ... outrageous peonies the size of human heads, "the poppies with their black and secret centers" that lie "shattered on the lawn" under the heavy summer rain that mirrors the poet's "missing you steadily, painfully" mood. In "Gettysburg: July 1, 1863," Kenyon captures the death of a soldier with the precision and finality of Emily Dickinson's "I Heard a Fly Buzz," and also from the inside. One soldier, one specific day, luminous images.
Although much longer than the three simple lines of haiku, Kenyon's poems share with that briefer form that eye for detail and the ability to juxtapose seemingly dissimilar things to create a jolt of recognition of their underlying connection. In that she is like the metaphysical poets with their principle of universal analogy. All things are connected.
Another key element of Kenyon's poems is her chronicling of the simple events of country life ... the church rummage sale, a visit to the store in town, the birthing of lambs, working in the garden, taking the dog for a walk ... and of family milestones ... the illnesses and deaths of loved ones, the moving of a parent from the family home, the sale of possessions, the memories inspired by old photos and objects.
Taken together, the poems that comprise Otherwise, a mix of melancholy and joy, of the particular and the universal, are well worth reading. It is quite the legacy.
January 14, 2013
The poet began this collection as she was sick with leukemia, and then dying at home, and with the help of her husband, the poet Donald Hall. I find it so interesting that most are not new poems, about her illness and death, which is tragic, because it seems like we could have learned desperately needed tools from her, about dying. She writes a lot about a parent’s death, and that resonates with me since it has been 2 weeks since my mother died. I didn’t know these poems would be that meaningful, so just another way providence provides, apparently.
"Otherwise"
I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.
At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.
"How like the sound"
How like the sound of laughing weeping
is. I wasn’t sure until I saw your face-
your eyes squeezed shut, and the big
hot tears spurting out.
there you sat, upright, in your mother’s
reclining chair, tattered from the wear
of many years. Not since childhood
had you wept this way, head back, throat
open like a hound. Of course the howling
had to stop. I saw you add call realtor
to your list before your red face
vanished behind the morning Register.
"Eating the Cookies" (excerpt)
Each time I emptied a drawer or shelf
I permitted myself to eat one.
I cleared the closet of her silk caftans
that slipped easily from clattering hangers,
and from the bureau I took her nightgowns
and sweaters, financial documents,
neatly cinctured in long gray envelopes,
and the hairnets and peppermints she’d tucked among
Lucite frames abounding with great grandchildren.
solemn in their Christmas finery.
Finally the drawers were empty,
the bags full, and 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.
"Here"
You always belonged here.
You were theirs, certain as a rock.
I’m the one who worries
if I fit in with the furniture
and the landscape.
But I “follow too much
the devices and desires of my own heart.”
Already the curves in the road
are familiar to me, and the mountain
in all kinds of light,
treating all people the same.
and when I come over the hill,
I see the house, with its generous
and firm proportions, smoke
rising gaily from the chimney.
I feel my life start up again,
like a cutting when it grows
the first pale and tentative
root hair in a glass of water.
"Reading Aloud to My Father"
I chose the book haphazard
from the shelf, but with Nabokov's first
sentence I knew it wasn't the thing
to read to a dying man:
The cradle rocks above an abyss, it began,
and common sense tells us that our existence
is but a brief crack of light
between two eternities of darkness.
The words disturbed both of us immediately,
and I stopped. With music it was the same --
Chopin's Piano Concerto — he asked me
to turn it off. He ceased eating, and drank
little, while the tumors briskly appropriated
what was left of him.
But to return to the cradle rocking. I think
Nabokov had it wrong. This is the abyss.
That's why babies howl at birth,
and why the dying so often reach
for something only they can apprehend.
At the end they don't want their hands
to be under the covers, and if you should put
your hand on theirs in a tentative gesture
of solidarity, they'll pull the hand free;
and you must honor that desire,
and let them pull it free.
"Depression in Winter":
There comes a little space between the south
side of a boulder
and the snow that fills the woods around it.
Sun heats the stone, reveals
a crescent of bare ground: brown ferns,
and tufts of needles like red hair,
acorns, a patch of moss, bright green....
I sank with every step up to my knees,
throwing myself forward with a violence
of effort, greedy for unhappiness—
until by accident I found the stone,
with its secret porch of heat and light,
where something small could luxuriate, then
turned back down my path, chastened and calm.
"We Let the Boat Drift"
I set out for the pond, crossing the ravine
where seedling pines start up like sparks
between the disused rails of the Boston and Maine.
The grass in the field would make a second crop
if early autumn rains hadn't washed
the goodness out. After the night's hard frost
it makes a brittle rustling as I walk.
The water is utterly still. Here and there
a black twig sticks up. It's five years today,
and even now I can't accept what cancer did
to him -- not death so much as the annihilation
of the whole man, sense by sense, thought
by thought, hope by hope.
Once we talked about the life to come.
I took the Bible from the nightstand
and offered John 14: "I go to prepare
a place for you.""Fine. Good," he said.
"But what about Matthew? 'You, therefore,
must be perfect, as your heavenly Father
is perfect.'" And he wept.
My neighbor honks and waves driving by.
She counsels troubled students; keeps bees;
her goats follow her to the mailbox.
Last Sunday afternoon we went canoeing on the pond.
Something terrible at school had shaken her.
We talked quietly far from shore. The paddles
rested across our laps; glittering drops
fell randomly from their tips. The light
around us seemed alive. A loon-itinerant-
let us get quite close before it dove, coming up
after a long time, and well away from humankind.
Notes from the Other Side
I divested myself of despair
and fear when I came here.
Now there is no more catching
one's own eye in the mirror,
there are no bad books, no plastic,
no insurance premiums, and of course
no illness. Contrition
does not exist, nor gnashing
of teeth. No one howls as the first
clod of earth hits the casket.
The poor we no longer have with us.
Our calm hearts strike only the hour,
and God, as promised, proves
to be mercy clothed in light.
"Otherwise"
I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.
At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.
"How like the sound"
How like the sound of laughing weeping
is. I wasn’t sure until I saw your face-
your eyes squeezed shut, and the big
hot tears spurting out.
there you sat, upright, in your mother’s
reclining chair, tattered from the wear
of many years. Not since childhood
had you wept this way, head back, throat
open like a hound. Of course the howling
had to stop. I saw you add call realtor
to your list before your red face
vanished behind the morning Register.
"Eating the Cookies" (excerpt)
Each time I emptied a drawer or shelf
I permitted myself to eat one.
I cleared the closet of her silk caftans
that slipped easily from clattering hangers,
and from the bureau I took her nightgowns
and sweaters, financial documents,
neatly cinctured in long gray envelopes,
and the hairnets and peppermints she’d tucked among
Lucite frames abounding with great grandchildren.
solemn in their Christmas finery.
Finally the drawers were empty,
the bags full, and 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.
"Here"
You always belonged here.
You were theirs, certain as a rock.
I’m the one who worries
if I fit in with the furniture
and the landscape.
But I “follow too much
the devices and desires of my own heart.”
Already the curves in the road
are familiar to me, and the mountain
in all kinds of light,
treating all people the same.
and when I come over the hill,
I see the house, with its generous
and firm proportions, smoke
rising gaily from the chimney.
I feel my life start up again,
like a cutting when it grows
the first pale and tentative
root hair in a glass of water.
"Reading Aloud to My Father"
I chose the book haphazard
from the shelf, but with Nabokov's first
sentence I knew it wasn't the thing
to read to a dying man:
The cradle rocks above an abyss, it began,
and common sense tells us that our existence
is but a brief crack of light
between two eternities of darkness.
The words disturbed both of us immediately,
and I stopped. With music it was the same --
Chopin's Piano Concerto — he asked me
to turn it off. He ceased eating, and drank
little, while the tumors briskly appropriated
what was left of him.
But to return to the cradle rocking. I think
Nabokov had it wrong. This is the abyss.
That's why babies howl at birth,
and why the dying so often reach
for something only they can apprehend.
At the end they don't want their hands
to be under the covers, and if you should put
your hand on theirs in a tentative gesture
of solidarity, they'll pull the hand free;
and you must honor that desire,
and let them pull it free.
"Depression in Winter":
There comes a little space between the south
side of a boulder
and the snow that fills the woods around it.
Sun heats the stone, reveals
a crescent of bare ground: brown ferns,
and tufts of needles like red hair,
acorns, a patch of moss, bright green....
I sank with every step up to my knees,
throwing myself forward with a violence
of effort, greedy for unhappiness—
until by accident I found the stone,
with its secret porch of heat and light,
where something small could luxuriate, then
turned back down my path, chastened and calm.
"We Let the Boat Drift"
I set out for the pond, crossing the ravine
where seedling pines start up like sparks
between the disused rails of the Boston and Maine.
The grass in the field would make a second crop
if early autumn rains hadn't washed
the goodness out. After the night's hard frost
it makes a brittle rustling as I walk.
The water is utterly still. Here and there
a black twig sticks up. It's five years today,
and even now I can't accept what cancer did
to him -- not death so much as the annihilation
of the whole man, sense by sense, thought
by thought, hope by hope.
Once we talked about the life to come.
I took the Bible from the nightstand
and offered John 14: "I go to prepare
a place for you.""Fine. Good," he said.
"But what about Matthew? 'You, therefore,
must be perfect, as your heavenly Father
is perfect.'" And he wept.
My neighbor honks and waves driving by.
She counsels troubled students; keeps bees;
her goats follow her to the mailbox.
Last Sunday afternoon we went canoeing on the pond.
Something terrible at school had shaken her.
We talked quietly far from shore. The paddles
rested across our laps; glittering drops
fell randomly from their tips. The light
around us seemed alive. A loon-itinerant-
let us get quite close before it dove, coming up
after a long time, and well away from humankind.
Notes from the Other Side
I divested myself of despair
and fear when I came here.
Now there is no more catching
one's own eye in the mirror,
there are no bad books, no plastic,
no insurance premiums, and of course
no illness. Contrition
does not exist, nor gnashing
of teeth. No one howls as the first
clod of earth hits the casket.
The poor we no longer have with us.
Our calm hearts strike only the hour,
and God, as promised, proves
to be mercy clothed in light.
January 19, 2018
Jane Kenyon, along with her husband, Donald Hall, are two of my favorite poets. Both write concrete, accessible verse that communicates the universal through their particular experience. In this collection, Kenyon's newest poems were written after her diagnosis of the cancer that eventually killed her. She suffers greatly, but strives to find the good in a horrible situation. Her struggle is heartbreaking, sad, yet beautiful. It may not replace the beauty of Heaven and ultimate redemption, but Kenyon holds on to the beauty of the earth, of her rural surroundings, of her love for Donald and his love for her, of the ultimate goodness of the world despite the fact that she would wish it otherwise. All of us would wish that sickness, and death, especially a death before old age sets in, would be otherwise. Yet the world is not otherwise, and Kenyon accepts that with grace and dignity is these beautiful poems. This is a book for every human being, since every human being has suffered, will suffer, or is suffering. I highly recommend it.
Read
December 7, 2025With this volume, I have discovered that Jane Kenyon just might be my literary soulmate, meaning she understands me perfectly and I lovingly try to comprehend her. Having only really read a couple of her poems before this, I think Jane Kenyon is a revelation and a miracle, and I'm so glad to have found her and truly seen her at this point in my life.
Kenyon's poetry is the poetry of deep observation, an ever-present lingering that maybe only the lonely and melancholy are fully capable of. Reading my favorite poems from this collection aloud felt like having God in my mouth. This is a level of seeing and paying attention that I will aspire to for the rest of my life. I love Jane Kenyon!!!!!!!!
favorite poems: "Happiness," "Man Eating," "The Call," "How Like the Sound," "Full Moon in Winter," "Evening Sun," "The Visit," "Brieftly It Enters, and Briefly Speaks," "In the Grove: The Poet at Ten," "Insomnia," "A Boy Goes Into the World," "Heavy Summer Rain," "Let Evening Come," and "Having It Out with Melancholy"
Kenyon's poetry is the poetry of deep observation, an ever-present lingering that maybe only the lonely and melancholy are fully capable of. Reading my favorite poems from this collection aloud felt like having God in my mouth. This is a level of seeing and paying attention that I will aspire to for the rest of my life. I love Jane Kenyon!!!!!!!!
favorite poems: "Happiness," "Man Eating," "The Call," "How Like the Sound," "Full Moon in Winter," "Evening Sun," "The Visit," "Brieftly It Enters, and Briefly Speaks," "In the Grove: The Poet at Ten," "Insomnia," "A Boy Goes Into the World," "Heavy Summer Rain," "Let Evening Come," and "Having It Out with Melancholy"
April 18, 2024
Beautiful, insightful, and often poignant look at every-day things and events. Jane beautifully pulls out the significance and beauty of small things, pointing our attention to notice and appreciate the details. But such a heavy weight of sadness throughout, which makes sense considering her struggle with depression, which I didn't know about when I started the book. I kept looking for something uplifting and encouraging, and found little. For several of the poems I would love to know the backstory--of whom she was speaking and what happened. Who was ill, who died, what was her role and relationship in the person's life.
I would recommend reading the Afterword first, as it tells of the creation of this particular volume of poems. Understanding the backdrop on which it was assembled sooner in my reading (I think I was 2/3 - 3/4 of the way through when I read the Afterword) would have enhanced my reading of the poems themselves.
I would recommend reading the Afterword first, as it tells of the creation of this particular volume of poems. Understanding the backdrop on which it was assembled sooner in my reading (I think I was 2/3 - 3/4 of the way through when I read the Afterword) would have enhanced my reading of the poems themselves.
July 24, 2022
Donald Hall describes his wife’s work in the “Afterwards” as “the art of the luminous particular.” It is just that: a perfect romp through the often overlooked motions that make up a life. Within this world of the everyday, Kenyon captures depression like no one else, her poems an ode to the constant amid all that is not. While there were moments I tired of the biblical and “all-American” sentiments scattered throughout, the generosity and quietude I found in these pages will give me cause to return to them again and again.
Some favourites:
- Reading Aloud to My Father
- The Clothes Pin
- Afternoon in the House
- With the Dog at Sunrise
- Who
- Thinking of Madame Bovary
- Having it Out with Melancholy
Some favourites:
- Reading Aloud to My Father
- The Clothes Pin
- Afternoon in the House
- With the Dog at Sunrise
- Who
- Thinking of Madame Bovary
- Having it Out with Melancholy
November 7, 2023
Jane Kenyon could take ordinary thoughts and images we all have and make them come alive. I found myself reading her poems and thinking "I wish I'd said that." Instead of writing "the sun sets" she wrote "the sun leaves work for the day." How many times have I looked up to see a haze partially blocking the moon? Kenyon explained it this way: "the moon shines with only half a heart." The poet and her husband Donald Hall put this book together of her favorite poems. I am thankful they did. Otherwise... Readers lost the writer to leukemia when when was 47 years old, but her words remain with us in her books.
July 6, 2025
Twilight: After Haying
Yes, long shadows go out
from the bales; and yes, the soul
must part from the body:
what else could it do?
The men sprawl near the baler,
too tired to leave the field.
They talk and smoke,
and the tips of their cigarettes
blaze like small roses
in the night air. (It arrived
and settled among them
before they were aware.)
The moon comes
to count the bales,
and the dispossessed —
“Whip-poor-will, Whip-poor-will”
— sings from the dusty stubble.
These things happen...the soul's bliss
and suffering are bound together
like the grasses....
The last, sweet exhalations
of timothy and vetch
go out with the song of the bird;
the ravaged field
grows wet with dew.
Yes, long shadows go out
from the bales; and yes, the soul
must part from the body:
what else could it do?
The men sprawl near the baler,
too tired to leave the field.
They talk and smoke,
and the tips of their cigarettes
blaze like small roses
in the night air. (It arrived
and settled among them
before they were aware.)
The moon comes
to count the bales,
and the dispossessed —
“Whip-poor-will, Whip-poor-will”
— sings from the dusty stubble.
These things happen...the soul's bliss
and suffering are bound together
like the grasses....
The last, sweet exhalations
of timothy and vetch
go out with the song of the bird;
the ravaged field
grows wet with dew.
March 10, 2020
Thanks to interning at Graywolf I feel like I heard a lot about Jane Kenyon but wasn't familiar with her work until I read this anthology. She's a lovely poet but a little dated, and very East Coast style. I can see how this was really cutting edge when it was released 20+ years ago and why Kenyon still holds a special place in many poetry lovers' hearts. I prefer the modern style of the Danez and Tracy K. Smiths of the world myself, but this was still a wonderfully calming pre-bedtime read. Worth picking up if you like nature-themed poetry especially.
March 1, 2020
Sometimes you don’t want a book to end. This collection of poetry by Jane Kenyon is one of those times. Particularly moving is the fact that she and Donald Hall selected these works for this book while Kenyon was in the end stages of terminal leukemia. It was the end for a brilliant poet. I feel fortunate to have discovered her, not from a course but because I read Donald Hall’s work. He led me to her. I know I will often turn to these poems.
March 4, 2024
"Otherwise" by Jane Kenyon left me conflicted. While Kenyon's poetic voice is undeniably poignant, the collection lacks the diversity and depth I expected. The themes explored feel repetitive, and the emotional resonance often falls flat. Although there are moments of brilliance scattered throughout, they are overshadowed by the overwhelming sense of monotony. Overall, "Otherwise" fails to leave a lasting impression and may disappoint readers seeking more varied and compelling poetry.
August 27, 2017
I much preferred Kenyon's shorter works to this. I generally much prefer smaller poetry books to compilations. I'm wowed by "Constance", really enjoyed "Let Evening Come" and liked the rest of this work. This took me forever to finish.
I expect to go back to "Constance" over and over. I really wanted to like this more. So it goes.
I expect to go back to "Constance" over and over. I really wanted to like this more. So it goes.
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