What do you think?
Rate this book
From Room to Room: Poems
The poems in Jane Kenyon’s first book are full of respect for a life deeply felt. Her vision apprehends the mystery beneath everyday circumstances and objects, from the thimble to the edges of the map. The final section is translations of six poems by Anna Akhmatova.
- GenresPoetryNonfiction
68 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 1978
3 people are currently reading
84 people want to read
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’
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
December 20, 2019
Some samples:
The First Eight Days of the Beard
by Jane Kenyon
1. A page of exclamation points.
2. A class of cadets at attention.
3. A school of eels.
4. Standing commuters.
5. A bed on nails for the swami.
6. Flagpoles of unknown countries.
7. Centipedes resting on their laurels.
8. The toenails of the face.
The Socks
by Jane Kenyon
While you were away
I matched your socks
and rolled them into balls.
Then I filled your drawer with
tight dark fists.
The Shirt
by Jane Kenyon
The shirt touches his neck
and smoothes over his back.
It slides down his sides.
It even goes down below his belt--
down into his pants.
Lucky shirt.
The First Eight Days of the Beard
by Jane Kenyon
1. A page of exclamation points.
2. A class of cadets at attention.
3. A school of eels.
4. Standing commuters.
5. A bed on nails for the swami.
6. Flagpoles of unknown countries.
7. Centipedes resting on their laurels.
8. The toenails of the face.
The Socks
by Jane Kenyon
While you were away
I matched your socks
and rolled them into balls.
Then I filled your drawer with
tight dark fists.
The Shirt
by Jane Kenyon
The shirt touches his neck
and smoothes over his back.
It slides down his sides.
It even goes down below his belt--
down into his pants.
Lucky shirt.
May 7, 2025
I liked this collection of poems! Modern poetry can be so convoluted sometimes, so I enjoyed the simplicity of Kenyon’s style while still maintaining depth and meaning beyond the surface. She also is very witty and clearly had a great sense of humor, which was refreshing. I particularly enjoyed the poem “Starting Therapy” for its cleverness and the way it touched something in me, and I imagine that I’ll revisit it often from now on.
October 8, 2025
Not an inch of dramatization, just everything plainly true and perfect. There are 3 poets I can stand anymore and Jane Kenyon's 2 of them!
October 6, 2015
Rereading Kenyon's From Room to Room for the first time in almost 30 years reminded me not only of how good a poet she was, but how much I miss the Deep Image lyricism of the seventies--poems who's leaps weren't clever or intellectualized but imagistic and jarring for how they reverberated like a struck bell. The book ends with several translations of Ahkmatova, that are lovely as anything in the rest of the collection.
July 12, 2019
Lovely, sometimes melancholy and sometimes sweet. Simple and lyrical, made me ache for home and brought to mind thoughts of fall and winter.
January 27, 2022
The mare kicks
in her darkened stall, knocks
over a bucket.
The goose . . .
The cow keeps a peaceful brain
behind her broad face.
Last light moves
through cracks in the wall,
over bales of hay.
And the bat lets
go of the rafter, falls
into black air.
* * *
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!
* * *
While you were away
I matched your socks
and rolled them into balls.
Then I filled your drawer with
tight dark fists.
* * *
Bare branches rise
and fall overhead.
The barn door bangs loose,
persistent as remorse
after anger and shouting.
Dogs bark across the pond.
The shadow of the house
appears on the crusted snow
like the idea of a house,
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. . . .
in her darkened stall, knocks
over a bucket.
The goose . . .
The cow keeps a peaceful brain
behind her broad face.
Last light moves
through cracks in the wall,
over bales of hay.
And the bat lets
go of the rafter, falls
into black air.
- For the Night, pg. 2
* * *
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!
- The Clothes Pin, pg. 14
* * *
While you were away
I matched your socks
and rolled them into balls.
Then I filled your drawer with
tight dark fists.
- The Socks, pg. 28
* * *
Bare branches rise
and fall overhead.
The barn door bangs loose,
persistent as remorse
after anger and shouting.
Dogs bark across the pond.
The shadow of the house
appears on the crusted snow
like the idea of a house,
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. . . .
- Full Moon in Winter, pg. 44
November 3, 2025
michigan-born poet excellence. lyrical, witty, profound. musical like a wind chime, not like a drum. so many of these play wonderfully with the sickness of nostalgia and the intimacy of lineage. peering close into the reality of creatures everywhere living both the same and very different lives. all life written with equal weight and attention. the word “windy” to encapsulate these also feels appropriate. masterpiece level poems.
favorites:
“cages”
“the circle on the grass”
“after an early frost”
“the needle”
“at a motel near o’hare airport”
favorites:
“cages”
“the circle on the grass”
“after an early frost”
“the needle”
“at a motel near o’hare airport”
Read
September 20, 2021 This long struggle to be at home
in the body, this difficult friendship.
-
A land not mine, still
forever memorable,
the waters of its ocean
chill and fresh.
Sand on the bottom whiter than chalk,
and the air drunk, like wine;
late sun lays bare
the rosy limbs of the pinetrees.
Sunset in the ethereal waves:
I cannot tell if the day
is ending, or the world, or if
the secret of secrets is within me again.
1964
in the body, this difficult friendship.
-
A land not mine, still
forever memorable,
the waters of its ocean
chill and fresh.
Sand on the bottom whiter than chalk,
and the air drunk, like wine;
late sun lays bare
the rosy limbs of the pinetrees.
Sunset in the ethereal waves:
I cannot tell if the day
is ending, or the world, or if
the secret of secrets is within me again.
1964
December 31, 2018
Some poems are simple, and some are deceptively simple. So much can be said with a seemingly mundane anecdote or image. Not all, but some of these poems are highly relatable, beautiful, and transformative--even, at times, instructive. Sometimes sweet, sometimes melancholic, sometimes both at once. I'll be returning to a number of these poems.
April 7, 2021
I read a quote once that said poetry is about the spaces between words. I felt the spaces in these poems. A few will go in my notebook of favorite poems. Very calm and thoughtful. Observant of everyday objects, but also connecting to emotions, thoughts, and memory.
January 23, 2021
Spare and moving.
December 24, 2022
2.5. not bad at all just not very memorable
Read
November 29, 2023American gothic core
April 3, 2024
Her first book. She was already masterful.
January 19, 2025
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.
is a cloud before the soul’s eye.
This long struggle to be at home
in the body, this difficult friendship.
April 28, 2008
This book is not very good. Kenyon seems to be able to write a single line that is good, but she can't finish the job. My problem is not with her style (simple, slice of life sort of things), the problem is that there are many writers FAR better at it than her. I know this is her first book. Perhaps she's gotten better. She clearly sees the right things, but she can't make me see them the way she does.
January 12, 2016
I read this after finishing Donald Hall's work "The Best Day, The Worst Day" about his life with Kenyon and her battle with leukemia. The bits of information and knowledge gleaned about their life together, the history of their house and their life in it, made these poems more full of meaning and perhaps I enjoyed them even more than I would have had I only pulled this book from a shelf to read without context. That said, the poems were still masterful.
March 8, 2012
Jane Kenyon is a beloved companion during the bleak days of late fall and winter. Reading and rereading her poetry is a joy for my soul. In From Room to Room she chronicles the inner and outer weather of her life.
May 7, 2014
I borrowed this after reading Dani Shapiro's "Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life." A lovely book of poems.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews