This Week, I'm Reading...

Otherwise: New & Selected Poems, by Jane Kenyon

As you already know if you read my Wednesday column a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been reading a biography of Jane Kenyon. I thought I would sprinkle in a few poems between chapters, but it turns out I’ve been reading more than a sprinkling. I started reading several poems every night before turning to the biography. Often those same poems turn up in the text, but even when they don’t, they’re providing texture and nuance to the biography. I’m really enjoying the interplay between the two books. If you’re interested in Kenyon’s poetry, Otherwise is a great choice because it’s something like a “best of” volume, drawing a good number of poems from each of her collections and adding—as the title suggests—some that were new at the time of publication. It’s interesting to observe her growth as a poet. I can’t quite articulate what this growth entails without combing back through more carefully, but somehow the later poems read as more confident. Religious themes also become more prominent. Throughout, Kenyon’s work is strongly tied to place—the old family farmstead at Eagle Pond in Wilmot, New Hampshire, which Kenyon shared with her poet husband Donald Hall. One major argument of the biography is that Kenyon deserves to be read outside of her relationship with Hall, which she often felt stifled by, professionally speaking—so it’s a bit troubling to see, from the table of contents in Otherwise, that Hall gets the last word on Kenyon, who died before this volume was published, in both an Afterword and in a poem titled “The Sick Wife.” I haven’t gotten there yet, but already I wish he’d backed off and let her book be hers.

What are you reading this week? Let us know in the comment section below!