Synopses & Reviews
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 include: 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.
Review
"Kenyon writes prose the way she writes poetry, turning simple or frankly unbeautiful things sideways and inviting us to see what they offer us to love. Some of the most moving essays here chronicle her quest to make peace with Christianity, and in an introduction her husband, the poet Donald Hall, recalls a vision that left her 'in a quiet, exalted, shining mood.' We leave this book the same way." --
New Yorker"Her words, with their quiet, rapt force, their pensiveness and wit, come to us from natural speech, from the Bible and hymns, from which she derived the singular psalmlike music that is hers alone." --New York Times Book Review
Synopsis
In personal and critical essays, letters, poems, an interview, and reviews by writers around the country, Jane Kenyons life and works are considered and celebrated for their tenacity, spirit, and timeless charm.
Simply Lasting includes new responses to Kenyons 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 Kenyons place as one of Americas 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 include: 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.
About the Author
Joyce Peseroff is the author of three collections of poems with a forthcoming collection,
Eastern Mountain Time, from Carnegie Mellon University Press in 2006. She grew up in New York City and currently resides in Massachusetts, where she is on the faculty of the University of Massachusetts, Boston.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Personal Essays, Letters, Poems, and One Interview
Alice Mattison, "Let it Grow in the Dark like a Mushroom"
Jane Kenyon, Seven Letters to Alice Mattison
Gregory Orr, from "Our Lady of Sorrows"
Galway Kinnell, "How Could She Not"
Maxine Kumin, "Dinner at Jane and Don's"
Wendell Berry, from "Sweetness Preserved"
Jean Valentine, "Jane Kenyon 1947-1995", "Elegy for Jane Kenyon"
Caroline Finkelstein, "The Beacon"
Robert Bly, "A Few Lines about Jane", "The Yellow Dot"
Liam Rector, "Remembering Jane Kenyon"
Donald Hall, "Ghost in the House"
Mike Pride, "Still Present", "A Conversation with Jane Kenyon"
Critical Essays
Laban Hill, "Jane Kenyon"
John Timmerman, from "The Poet at Work"
Steven Cramer, "Home Alone: Self and Relation in Part I of The Boat of Quiet Hours"
Wes McNair, "A Government of Two"
Molly Peacock, from "A Comfort Poem"
Judith Harris, "Discerning Cherishment in Jane Kenyon's Poetry: A Psychoanalytic Approach"
Paul Breslin, "Jane Kenyon's Manners Towards God"
Lynn Strongin, "A Faith That Blessed through Sorrow: Meditations on Jane Kenyon's Poetry"
Shorter Pieces and Reviews
Hayden Carruth, from "Poets on the Fringe"
John Unterecker, from "Shape Changing in Contemporary Poetry"
Carol Muske, "The Boat of Quiet Hours"
Alfred Corn, from "Plural Perspectives, Heightened Perceptions"
Robert Pinsky, from "Tidings of Comfort and Dread: Poetry and the Dark Beauty of Christmas"
Marie Howe, "Jane Kenyon's Constance"
ri0Lucia Perillo, "Notes from the Other Side"
Peter Kramer, "Unequivocal Eye"
David Barber, "Constance"
Deborah Garrison, "Simply Lasting"
Robert Hass, Poet's Choice
Michael Dirda, from "The Gift of Being Simple"
Constance Merritt, "Otherwise"
Haines Sprunt Tate, from "Imitations of Mortality"