Otherwise: New and Selected PoemsOtherwise collects a lifetime's work of poetry by one of our most cherished poets. Opening with twenty 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 shortly before her death in April 1995. This extensive collection 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 at the poet's New Hampshire home. The shadow of depression in Jane Kenyon's verse has the force of a spiritual presence-- a god, demon, angel. Yet her work emphasizes the constant effort of her imagination to redeem her suffering. As her husband Donald 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." "Jane Kenyon is our Akhmatova. She will be read and remembered here as Akhmatova is read and remembered over there. For this we give no thanks because the gift is beyond thanks. But how deeply we are indebted!" Jane Kenyon was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1947. She published four collections of poetry and translated the poetry of Anna Akhmatova. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, the PEN Voelcker Award, and was featured with her husband Donald Hall in the Emmy Award-winning Bill Moyers special, "A Life Together." She died in April 1995 after fifteen months of struggle with leukemia. |
From inside the book
Results 1-3 of 15
... 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 Needle Grandmother , you are as pale as Christ's 36 THE CLOTHES PIN36.
... clothes and hung them out to dry . Then I went up to town and busied myself all day . The sleeve of your best shirt rose ceremonious when I drove in ; our night- clothes twined and untwined in a little gust of wind . For me it was ...
... clothes / 95 I woke before dawn , still / 67 Ice Out / 162 Ice Storm / 70 Impudent spring has come / 199 In haste one evening while making dinner / 209 In Memory of Jack / 204 In Several Colors / 35 In the Grove : The Poet at Ten / 124 ...