The Best Poems of Jane Kenyon - (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

"Jane Kenyon had a virtually faultless ear. She was an exquisite master of the art of poetry." --Wendell Berry

Published twenty-five years after her untimely death, The Best Poems of Jane Kenyon presents the essential work of one of America's most cherished poets--celebrated for her tenacity, spirit, and grace. In their inquisitive explorations and direct language, Jane Kenyon's poems disclose a quiet certainty in the natural world and a lifelong dialogue with her faith and her questioning of it. As a crucial aspect of these beloved poems of companionship, she confronts her struggle with severe depression on its own stark terms. Selected by Kenyon's husband, Donald Hall, just before his death in 2018, The Best Poems of Jane Kenyon collects work from across a life and career that will be, as she writes in one poem, "simply lasting."

Review Quotes

"Amidst all of Jane Kenyon's unyielding and absolute clarity . . . it's easy to forget she was a visionary too, a mystic. . . . These poems seem to orbit a nucleus of ecstatic awareness, of self-surrender. . . . The systems Kenyon creates here feel open, sweeping, and endless, like water bending over a horizon.'"--Kaveh Akbar

"The poems of Jane Kenyon are lodestars. I can think of no better way to navigate life than to keep her work close, as I have always done. It's thrilling to now have this great parting gift from Donald Hall--his loving, intimate, discerning selection of the best of her poems."--Dani Shapiro

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