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_mallc_'s review against another edition
2.0
I liked maybe two of the poems a fair bit and the rest was so-so.
bcbartuska's review against another edition
3.0
I'm new to poetry, but this was a good one to start with for me. She writes with simple phrases that are deep with meaning. Thought provoking without being over my head.
hanamarma's review
5.0
I have long been drawn to Jane Kenyon’s poetry. Her affection for the natural world and her quiet revelations were an early influence when I was writing in my undergrad English classes.
Often, Kenyon’s poems draw inspiration from a tight geographic circle: home, garden, the nearby woods. They are deeply personal, contemplative, and spiritual. Her poem “Staying at Grandma’s” from the collection Let Evening Come is all these things, and, additionally, it explores Kenyon’s childhood memories. The first three stanzas focus outward, describing the scene with simplicity and purity. From the first stanza: “turn the white shape / yellow in a buttered bowl” (4-5); and the second:
...its leaves
were red, was rooting on the sill
in a glass filled with water and azure
marbles. (6-8)
Kenyon primarily uses the short, simple words of childhood, breaking noticeably for the plant name, coleus, in the beginning of the second stanza. The first two stanzas have color descriptions that sound like a box of crayons: white, yellow, red, azure, blue.
The third stanza finally brings in the character promised in the title, the speaker’s grandmother, and with her, the poem moves from its bright rainbows into shadow:
“You know,” she’d say, turning
her straight and handsome back to me,
“that the body is the temple
of the Holy Ghost.” (11-14)
As the grandmother turns, so does the poem, and her words draw the child-speaker inwards toward a sense of guilt, perhaps the first stirrings of a coming-of-age guilt, which we imagine she must face alone, as the grandmother has turned away, and the parents have gone as well—“they left me for the day / while they went—what does it matter / where—away”—now takes on a more sinister cast (1-3).
The guilt of the speaker is religious as well as personal, the grandmother invoking the Holy Spirit, and in the final stanza, echoing this passage from the book of Matthew:
That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left. Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come.
This kind of exclusion, that God would “choose one to be with him in heaven / and leave the other there alone,” also becomes the Grandmother’s condemnation of the speaker (25-26). However, Kenyon does not create this sense of guilt and condemnation in a despairing way; by making the last stanza a question (“why did she say that?”) the speaker has already begun to challenge the way the world has been presented to her (21).
The simplicity of untroubled youth, set out at the beginning of the poem, doesn’t return, but the disapproval of the grandmother is not allowed to wholly swallow the speaker, either. In this way, the speaker acknowledges the guilt she is meant to feel as she comes of age, but she does not accept it without question, revealing the first seed of wisdom growing in this young girl.
Let Evening Come is filled with the consecration of the everyday, and she has several poems that describe the landscape and seasons near her home. One such poem is “After an Illness, Walking the Dog.” The joy of the dog in every bit of the world, fresh and new after some days away due, we presume, to the owner’s illness, grounds us visually and emotionally in the scene:
In a frenzy of delight
he runs way up the sandy road—
scored by freshets after five days
of rain. Every pebble gleams, every leaf. (4-7)
In fact, nearly the entire poem is carefully chosen imagery. Kenyon takes us on the dog’s romp, up hills, through beds of wildflowers, past the pond, the wind humming in our ears. It’s only in the last stanza, and especially the last two lines, that Kenyon turns the dog’s joy into metaphor:
Time to head home. I wait
until we’re nearly out to the main road
to put him back on the leash, and he
—the designated optimist—
imagines to the end that he is free. (27-31)
This is a true lyric moment: the freedom, which felt so real, is now drawn in; the romp finished, the dog leashed. And yet, the dog remains joyful until the very moment the leash is put back on.
For me, the dog becomes a symbol of a life lived fully and blissfully, as if mortality isn’t stalking our journey. The dog doesn’t let the ultimate end to his walk hamper his enjoyment. And I don’t think Kenyon is criticizing this outlook; rather, it seems she wishes she could partake in such freedom, however temporary it may be. Kenyon manages to elevate the dog’s experience without becoming saccharine. Subtly, she brings us into the realm of cosmic questions about mortality and a life well lived.
It is this subtlety that I so admire in Kenyon’s poetry. She is not afraid to give voice again to the old questions, using the natural world—the plants in her garden and woods, the animals with whom she spends her life—to draw parallels to the human experience in all its pain and joy and temporality.
Often, Kenyon’s poems draw inspiration from a tight geographic circle: home, garden, the nearby woods. They are deeply personal, contemplative, and spiritual. Her poem “Staying at Grandma’s” from the collection Let Evening Come is all these things, and, additionally, it explores Kenyon’s childhood memories. The first three stanzas focus outward, describing the scene with simplicity and purity. From the first stanza: “turn the white shape / yellow in a buttered bowl” (4-5); and the second:
...its leaves
were red, was rooting on the sill
in a glass filled with water and azure
marbles. (6-8)
Kenyon primarily uses the short, simple words of childhood, breaking noticeably for the plant name, coleus, in the beginning of the second stanza. The first two stanzas have color descriptions that sound like a box of crayons: white, yellow, red, azure, blue.
The third stanza finally brings in the character promised in the title, the speaker’s grandmother, and with her, the poem moves from its bright rainbows into shadow:
“You know,” she’d say, turning
her straight and handsome back to me,
“that the body is the temple
of the Holy Ghost.” (11-14)
As the grandmother turns, so does the poem, and her words draw the child-speaker inwards toward a sense of guilt, perhaps the first stirrings of a coming-of-age guilt, which we imagine she must face alone, as the grandmother has turned away, and the parents have gone as well—“they left me for the day / while they went—what does it matter / where—away”—now takes on a more sinister cast (1-3).
The guilt of the speaker is religious as well as personal, the grandmother invoking the Holy Spirit, and in the final stanza, echoing this passage from the book of Matthew:
That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left. Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come.
This kind of exclusion, that God would “choose one to be with him in heaven / and leave the other there alone,” also becomes the Grandmother’s condemnation of the speaker (25-26). However, Kenyon does not create this sense of guilt and condemnation in a despairing way; by making the last stanza a question (“why did she say that?”) the speaker has already begun to challenge the way the world has been presented to her (21).
The simplicity of untroubled youth, set out at the beginning of the poem, doesn’t return, but the disapproval of the grandmother is not allowed to wholly swallow the speaker, either. In this way, the speaker acknowledges the guilt she is meant to feel as she comes of age, but she does not accept it without question, revealing the first seed of wisdom growing in this young girl.
Let Evening Come is filled with the consecration of the everyday, and she has several poems that describe the landscape and seasons near her home. One such poem is “After an Illness, Walking the Dog.” The joy of the dog in every bit of the world, fresh and new after some days away due, we presume, to the owner’s illness, grounds us visually and emotionally in the scene:
In a frenzy of delight
he runs way up the sandy road—
scored by freshets after five days
of rain. Every pebble gleams, every leaf. (4-7)
In fact, nearly the entire poem is carefully chosen imagery. Kenyon takes us on the dog’s romp, up hills, through beds of wildflowers, past the pond, the wind humming in our ears. It’s only in the last stanza, and especially the last two lines, that Kenyon turns the dog’s joy into metaphor:
Time to head home. I wait
until we’re nearly out to the main road
to put him back on the leash, and he
—the designated optimist—
imagines to the end that he is free. (27-31)
This is a true lyric moment: the freedom, which felt so real, is now drawn in; the romp finished, the dog leashed. And yet, the dog remains joyful until the very moment the leash is put back on.
For me, the dog becomes a symbol of a life lived fully and blissfully, as if mortality isn’t stalking our journey. The dog doesn’t let the ultimate end to his walk hamper his enjoyment. And I don’t think Kenyon is criticizing this outlook; rather, it seems she wishes she could partake in such freedom, however temporary it may be. Kenyon manages to elevate the dog’s experience without becoming saccharine. Subtly, she brings us into the realm of cosmic questions about mortality and a life well lived.
It is this subtlety that I so admire in Kenyon’s poetry. She is not afraid to give voice again to the old questions, using the natural world—the plants in her garden and woods, the animals with whom she spends her life—to draw parallels to the human experience in all its pain and joy and temporality.
joujou_darrigood's review
challenging
dark
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
senid's review
5.0
I feel blessed to get to see a bit of the everyday world through this poet's words. I feel the spaces between words, and the line breaks make me consider words I once thought insignificant.
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