Simply Lasting: Writers on Jane Kenyon

by Joyce Peseroff (Editor)

In personal and critical essays, letters, poems, an interview, and reviews by writers around the country, Jane Kenyon's life and works are considered and celebrated for their tenacity, spirit, and timeless charm. Simply Lasting includes new responses to Kenyon's poetry and reviews and criticism written during her lifetime, as well as never-before-published letters from Kenyon herself. Poet, editor, and longtime friend of Kenyon, Joyce Peseroff has gathered writings that affirm Kenyon's place as one of America's most important recent poets. "That there will be no more writing by Jane Kenyon," Peseroff writes in her Introduction, "is one of the terrible losses that might have been otherwise." Contributors Wendell Berry, Robert Bly, Hayden Carruth, Michael Dirda, Donald Hall, Robert Hass, Marie Howe, Galway Kinnell, Peter Kramer, Maxine Kumin, Alice Mattison, Molly Peacock, Robert Pinsky, Jean Valentine, and many others.

256 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2005

Reviews

[Luann Ritsema · Rating 5 out of 5]

The essays by Gregory Orr, Donald Hall and Wendell Berry were worth 5 stars alone. But the whole enterprise did my soul some good -- and gave much food for quiet thought -- which is very much how I respond to Kenyon's poetry as well.

[Keith Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of remembrance and essays on Kenyon's work. There are a couple of very good essays that help a lot with the work. Many of the other pieces contribute to the Hagiography of Jane, but that's OK.

Here's piece I wrote for Michigan Quarterly about several of these books:

https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text...