04 Sept 23 Jane Kenyon – Poetic Spirit

Madame Kenyon and Her Immense, Small World

Why do particular poets’ names come to mind when “great poetry” hits a conversation? Robert Frost. Carl Sandburg. William Shakespeare. Homer. Walt Whitman. Emily Dickinson. Mary Oliver. Maya Angelou. Basho. What is it about famous poets and their well-known works that speak to so many people in diverse ways? Right to the heart. As many answers to the question exist as there are poets and their readers. 

It doesn’t seem to matter which form they use – haiku, free verse, epic, sonnet, dramatic dialogue, stylistically innovative with a mix of methods, and even a few poets who use no style at all – all forms have had successes with their artistic efforts.

For Jane Kenyon, nothing was too small for her to capture in her poetry. She pays attention to what most people pass by. She could be called a poet of the unseen: an ant, a whiff of hay, the breeze passing as a dog launches himself in pursuit of a stick. A poet of the small things as they disappear into earthly vapors.

Here are some general characteristics of good poetry. Jane Kenyon was a master of them all. Now, what about that question asked at the beginning of this introduction? 

• Take great care to express ideas and emotions related to the theme(s) in the poem.
• Use fresh, surprising images to support the poem’s tone.
• When complete, the poem inspires the reader and/or changes the readers’ point of view.
• The poem creates a deeper understanding of life that helps the reader to appreciate beauty and nature even in their darker forms.
• The writing does not just tell; it shows through concrete descriptions, inclusion of surprising image, and unusual viewpoints of the poem’s subject(s). 
• A good poem facilitates new awareness, unusual insights, and changes in viewpoints.

Kenyon was New Hampshire’s poet laureate when she died at age forty-seven. Notably, her poetry did not flinch from delving into the inner psyche, even in her battle with depression. Kenyon’s verse probed the inner psyche, particularly with regard to her own battle against depression. For the last 20 years of her life, Kenyon lived at and wrote about her surroundings and her life at her farm in northern New England. Tending toward the stoic, Kenyon did not shy away from stripped down descriptions of her remote life. Gary Roberts noted that 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.”

Thinking of Madame Bovary

The first hot April day the granite step

was warm. Flies droned in the grass.

When a car went past they rose

in unison, then dropped back down. . . .

I saw that a yellow crocus bud had pierced

a dead oak leaf, then opened wide. How strong

its appetite for the luxury of the sun!

Everyone longs for love’s tense joy and red delights.

And then I spied an ant

dragging a ragged, disembodied wing

up the warm brick walk. It must have been

the Methodist in me that leaned forward,

preceded by my shadow, to put a twig just where

the ant was struggling with its own desire.

Briefly It Enters, and Briefly It Speaks

I am the blossom pressed in a book,

Found again after two hundred years. . . .

I am the maker, the lover, and the keeper....

When the young girl who starves

sits down to a table

she will sit beside me. . . .

I am food on the prisoner's plate. . . .

I am water rushing to the wellhead,

filling the pitcher until it spills. . . .

I am the patient gardener

of the dry and weedy garden. . . .

I am the stone step,

the latch, and the working hinge. . . .

I am the heart contracted by joy. . . .

the longest hair, white

before the rest. . . .

I am there in the basket of fruit

presented to the widow. . . .

I am the musk rose opening

unattended, the fern on the boggy summit. . . .

I am the one whose love

overcomes you, already with you

when you think to call my name. . . .

The Clearing

The dog and I push through the ring

of dripping junipers

to enter the open space high on the hill

where I let him off the leash.

He vaults, snuffling, between tufts of moss;

twigs snap beneath his weight; he rolls

and rubs his jowls on the aromatic earth;

his pink tongue lolls.

I look for sticks of proper heft

to throw for him, while he sits, prim

and earnest in his love, if it is love.

All night a soaking rain, and now the hill

exhales relief, and the fragrance

of warm earth. . . . The sedges

have grown an inch since yesterday,

and ferns unfurled, and even if they try

the lilacs by the barn can’t

keep from opening today.

I longed for spring’s thousand tender greens,

and the white-throated sparrow’s call

that borders on rudeness. Do you know—

since you went away

all I can do

is wait for you to come back to me.

The Argument

On the way to the village store   

I drive through a down-draft   

from the neighbor’s chimney.   

Woodsmoke tumbles from the eaves   

backlit by sun, reminding me

of the fire and sulfur of Grandmother’s   

vengeful God, the one who disapproves

of jeans and shorts for girls,

dancing, strong waters, and adultery.

A moment later the smoke enters

the car, although the windows are tight,   

insinuating that I might, like Judas,

and the foolish virgins, and the rich

young man, have been made for unquenchable   

fire. God will need something to burn

if the fire is to be unquenchable.

“All things work together for the good   

for those who love God,” she said

to comfort me at Uncle Hazen’s funeral,   

where Father held me up to see

the maroon gladiolus that trembled

as we approached the bier, the elaborate   

shirred satin, brass fittings, anything,

oh, anything but Uncle’s squelched   

and made-up face.

“No! NO! How is it good to be dead?”

I cried afterward, wild-eyed and flushed.   

“God’s ways are not our ways,”

she said then out of pity

and the wish to forestall the argument.

Not Here

Searching for pillowcases trimmed   

with lace that my mother-in-law

once made, I open the chest of drawers   

upstairs to find that mice

have chewed the blue and white linen   

dishtowels to make their nest,

and bedded themselves

among embroidered dresser scarves   

and fingertip towels.

Tufts of fibers, droppings like black   

caraway seeds, and the stains of birth   

and afterbirth give off the strong   

unforgettable attar of mouse

that permeates an old farmhouse   

on humid summer days.

A couple of hickory nuts

roll around as I lift out

the linens, while a hail of black

sunflower shells

falls on the pillowcases,

yellow with age, but intact.

I’ll bleach them and hang them in the sun   

to dry. There’s almost no one left

who knows how to crochet lace....

The bright-eyed squatters are not here.   

They’ve scuttled out to the fields   

for summer, as they scuttled in

for winter—along the wall, from chair   

to skirted chair, making themselves   

flat and scarce while the cat

dozed with her paws in the air,

and we read the mail

or evening paper, unaware.

Background

Jane 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). In Otherwise: New and Selected Poems (1996), a posthumous collection containing twenty poems written just prior to her death due to leukemia, as well as several taken from her earlier books.

Exploration 1: “Thinking of Madame Bovary”: If you haven’t read this classic novel, read a summary before you answer this exploratory question. Why does Kenyon think of Bovary as Kenyon watches an ant in the poem.

Exploration 2: Kenyon suffered deeply from depression. How can a writer of her stature write when much of her life was shadowed by disease? Can depression be a catalyst for writing?

Exploration 3: 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.” Would you like to try to state this sentiment in everyday language?