This collection stands as something of a tribute to Jane Kenyon, who died in 1995 at the age of 48. Otherwise contains 20 new poems plus selected works from her four previous collections. The situations from which her lively writing arise often came from her daily life in and around the New Hampshire farm where she lived with her husband. The simple settings provides fertile ground for her richness of language. "As late as yesterday ice preoccupied the pond--dark, half-melted, waterlogged. Then it sank in the night, one piece, taking winter with it. And afterward everything seems simple and good." Beautiful, gracious poetry.


From Publishers Weekly
Kenyon's poetry is honest and earnest, rich in imagery yet free of clutter. Always technically proficient, her early poems were not always memorable, but her questioning of the value of life has been consistent: "And I knew then/ that I would have to live, and go on/ living: what a sorrow it was...." ("Evening Sun," from her second collection, The Boat of Quiet Hours, 1986). Coming of age at a time when psychiatry often was a useful poet's appliance, Kenyon works her way through superficial gloom to expose a widely familiar sadness. Sorrow begins with childhood, the 10-year-old experiencing a joy "so violent/ it was hard to distinguish from pain." Kenyon died of leukemia in April 1995 at age 47. The poems in this volume, being published on the first anniversary of her death, were selected by the poet; her husband, poet Donald Hall, offers an afterword. New poems, gathered in the first section, focus with unsentimental, entirely credible directness on her pending death. In "Eating the Cookies," the poet cleans a closet while nibbling on cookies sent by a cousin: "...the largest cookie,/ which I had saved for last, lay/ solitary in the tin with a nimbus/ of crumbs around it. There would be no more/ parcels from Portland. I took it up/ and sniffed it, and before eating it,/ pressed it against my forehead, because/ it seemed like the next thing to do." This collection is generous, cohesive and moving. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From School Library Journal
YA?Kenyon uses seemingly simple, ordinary details of her New Hampshire farm environment to share with readers her view of the essence of life. Mature, sensitive teens will appreciate the melancholy that peaks from just below the surface in many of these reflections on childhood, life, love, loss, death, and God, and can take comfort in the universality of the emotions expressed. Just as the poet wonders about her place in her husband's home in his grandparents' town, readers may wonder at their place in their own time. They may gain greater appreciation of the ability to communicate across generations as they study the poems addressing illness and death. They may find increased understanding of their own faith as they ponder such lines as "Let it come, as it will, and don't/be afraid. God does not leave us/comfortless, so let evening come." A different kind of guide to the meaning of life.?Barbara Hawkins, Oakton High School, Fairfax, VACopyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Kenyon died last April after a long struggle with leukemia, but she left behind a canon of poetry that will continue to touch us. In these poems, selections from her four books plus 20 new pieces, we experience the speaker's shadows of depression. Yet despite the tenebrous tone, there is a voice of hope. Reading each poem is like being led from room to room in a best friend's house. The speaker conducting us on this tour is somber in tone and mood yet committed to life in all its griefs and pleasures. The result is rich and intriguing, like "the blossoms pressed in a book/ found again after 200 years." There is no self-pity here, just an acknowledgment that something more powerful controls the speaker's life. This moving collection is truly a wonderful swan song. Highly recommended.?Tim Gavin, Episcopal Academy, Merion, Pa.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New Yorker, Deborah Garrison
Her poems are so frankly confiding, and the materials of her daily life, which were also the materials of her poetry, fall into a classic American genre that makes her world instantly recognizable to a newcomer.


The New York Times Book Review, Carol Muske
Nothing escapes her attention.... The poems in this book, which include work from her first four collections as well as 20 new poems, are reflective, unswervingly focused on what we call everyday life, though, as she makes clear, there is no such thing as the ordinary. In reading these poems, we witness a kind of vanishing act--we watch the poet disappear into the point of contemplation, into the poem itself....


From Booklist
Very shortly before she died in April 1995, Kenyon made, with the help of her husband, the poet Donald Hall, this selection of her work. It is the record of a life dogged by sadness yet filled with consolation. Kenyon struggled throughout her adult years with clinical depression, from which she obtained near-religious assuagement by immersing her consciousness in the New England countryside, in daily life, and in the memories and associations roused by her travels and by momentous personal events such as the illnesses and deaths of loved ones. Her poems consist of radiant particularities: animals, plants, activities, light, time of day--all recorded with an attention that is akin to prayer. Their collective tenor is well conveyed in the final octosyllabics of an uncharacteristically nondescriptive poem: "Let it come, as it will, and don't / be afraid. God does not leave us / comfortless, so let evening come." Personal, autobiographical lyric poetry is rarely this fine, this clear, this egoless, this involving. Ray Olson


Midwest Book Review
Otherwise offers a unique chance to study Jane Kenyon's body of work as she envisioned it. Kenyon finished shaping this book in the few days before her death. Collected here for the first time, these are the poems Kenyon felt were her finest and that best represented her rare poetic voice. Taken together the works illustrate her important contribution to American poetry.


From Independent Publisher
Just before she succumbed to leukemia at the age of 47, Kenyon and her husband - the poet Donald Hall - assembled this collection from poems included in her first four books, adding 20 new finished pieces. Evincing an urge toward exactitude, the faithful representation of natural objects captured in their own inner light, Kenyon's domestic lyrics and meditations offer an appreciation for the world's muted and reassuring wonders ("A single green sprouting thing/would restore me..") mixed with anxiety over the prospect of unforeseen change. )"I know you are with me, plants,/ and cats--and even so, I'm frightened,/ sitting in the middle of perfect/ possibility.") The poet's tonal control is always impressive, as is the warmth of her voice, and her sudden, tragic departure from the physical environment she so eloquently describes, lends these poems a special poignancy.


Review
"Here was a poet who wrote about traditional subjects—her family, the farm she shared with her husband, the rhythms of the natural world—and yet was celebrated by some of [the twentieth] century's most prominent writers and publishers. Kenyon's work was a model of simplicity: the perfect voice for an age that shuns adornment . . . There is often a strong undertow beneath the smooth exteriors."—Elizabeth Lund, The Christian Science Monitor

"Kenyon's poetry is honest and earnest, rich in imagery yet free of clutter . . . This collection is generous, cohesive, and moving."—Publishers Weekly

"Jane Kenyon was always a quiet poet . . . Yet if you listen carefully and read between the lines, there's always noise lurking somewhere: bugs, accidents, traumas, storms, and an underlying turbulence that makes Kenyon's work darker and more interesting than most New England nature poets . . . Otherwise, published on the first anniversary of her death from leukemia, includes new poems, sections from her four previous collections, and a poignant afterward by her husband, the poet Donald Hall . . . Perhaps the most interesting and complex character [in this book] is Kenyon's own depression, often personified and omnipresent. 'Having It Out With Melancholy' reads like an argument . . . Yet this is a poet who can also write that 'Happiness is the uncle you never / knew about, who flies a single-engine plane / onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes / into town, and inquires at every door / until he finds you asleep midafternoon.' Indeed, Otherwise is not without its transcendent moments of joy."—Susan Shapiro, Salon



Review
"Here was a poet who wrote about traditional subjects—her family, the farm she shared with her husband, the rhythms of the natural world—and yet was celebrated by some of [the twentieth] century's most prominent writers and publishers. Kenyon's work was a model of simplicity: the perfect voice for an age that shuns adornment . . . There is often a strong undertow beneath the smooth exteriors."—Elizabeth Lund, The Christian Science Monitor

"Kenyon's poetry is honest and earnest, rich in imagery yet free of clutter . . . This collection is generous, cohesive, and moving."—Publishers Weekly

"Jane Kenyon was always a quiet poet . . . Yet if you listen carefully and read between the lines, there's always noise lurking somewhere: bugs, accidents, traumas, storms, and an underlying turbulence that makes Kenyon's work darker and more interesting than most New England nature poets . . . Otherwise, published on the first anniversary of her death from leukemia, includes new poems, sections from her four previous collections, and a poignant afterward by her husband, the poet Donald Hall . . . Perhaps the most interesting and complex character [in this book] is Kenyon's own depression, often personified and omnipresent. 'Having It Out With Melancholy' reads like an argument . . . Yet this is a poet who can also write that 'Happiness is the uncle you never / knew about, who flies a single-engine plane / onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes / into town, and inquires at every door / until he finds you asleep midafternoon.' Indeed, Otherwise is not without its transcendent moments of joy."—Susan Shapiro, Salon



Book Description
Otherwise collects a lifetime's work by one of contemporary poetry's most cherished talents. Opening with twenty new poems and including generous selections from Jane Kenyon's four previous books—From Room to Room, The Boat of Quiet Hours, Let Evening Come, and Constance—this collection was selected and arranged by Kenyon herself—alongside her husband, the esteemed poet Donald Hall—shortly before her death in April 1995.

This extensive gathering reveals a scrupulously crafted body of work in which poem after poem achieves a rare and somber grace. Light and shade are never far apart in these telling narratives of life and love and work at the poet's rural New Hampshire home. The shadow of depression in Kenyon's verse, which grew much darker and longer at certain intervals, has the force and heft of a spiritual presence—a god, demon, angel. Yet her work emphasizes the constant effort of her imagination to confront and even find redemption in suffering. However quiet or domesticated or subtle in her moods and methods, Kenyon was a poet who sought to discover the extraordinary within the ordinary, and her poems continue to make this discovery. As Hall writes in the afterword to Otherwise, we share "her joy in the body and the creation, in flowers, music, and paintings, in hayfields and a dog."

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Otherwise collects a lifetime's work of poetry by one of our most cherished poets. Opening with twenty new poems and including generous selections from Jane Kenyon's four previous books - From Room to Room, The Boat of Quiet Hours, Let Evening Come, and Constance - this collection was selected and arranged by Kenyon shortly before her death in April 1995. This extensive collection reveals a scrupulously crafted body of work in which poem after poem achieves a rare and somber grace. Light and shade are never far apart in these telling narratives of life at the poet's New Hampshire home. The shadow of depression in Jane Kenyon's verse has the force of a spiritual presence - a god, demon, angel. Yet her work emphasizes the constant effort of her imagination to redeem her suffering. As her husband Donald Hall writes in the afterword to Otherwise, we share "her joy in the body and the creation, in flowers, music, and paintings, in hayfields and a dog."

FROM THE CRITICS

Susan Shapiro

Jane Kenyon was always a quiet poet. Her 1986 collection is called The Boat of Quiet Hours, her poem "Afternoon in the House" begins "It's quiet here. The cats/sprawl, each/in a favored place," and several other poems speak eloquently of silence. Yet if you listen carefully and read between the lines, there's always noise lurking somewhere: bugs, accidents, traumas, storms and an underlying turbulence that makes Kenyon's work darker and more interesting than most New England nature poets. Kenyon's new poetry book, Otherwise, published on the first anniversary of her death from leukemia, includes new poems, sections from her four previous collections and a poignant afterward by her husband, the poet Donald Hall.

Although Kenyon's frequent references to cats, dogs and birds may become tiresome for non animal-lovers, and too many of these poems employ religious imagery that seems pedestrian, the characters in her day-to-day life are engaging, as are the dialogue and details she employs to elucidate her relationship to them. In "Ironing Grandmother's Tablecloth" she tells of visiting her eccentric grandmother, who complains "how my father left poisoned grapefruit on the back/porch at Christmas, how somebody comes at night/to throw stones at the house." In "My Mother," her mother returns from a trip downtown to the dime store: "She is wearing her red shoes with straps across the instep. They fasten with small white buttons, like the eyes of a fish."

Perhaps the most interesting and complex character is Kenyon's own depression, often personified and omnipresent. "Having It Out With Melancholy" reads like an argument: "Suggestion From a Friend: You wouldn't be so depressed/if you really believed in God." Yet this is a poet who can also write that "Happiness is the uncle you never/knew about, who flies a single-engine plane/onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes/into town, and inquires at every door/until he finds you asleep midafternoon." Indeed, Otherwise is not without its transcendent moments of joy. -- Salon

Publishers Weekly

Kenyon's poetry is honest and earnest, rich in imagery yet free of clutter. Always technically proficient, her early poems were not always memorable, but her questioning of the value of life has been consistent: "And I knew then/ that I would have to live, and go on/ living: what a sorrow it was...." ("Evening Sun," from her second collection, The Boat of Quiet Hours, 1986). Coming of age at a time when psychiatry often was a useful poet's appliance, Kenyon works her way through superficial gloom to expose a widely familiar sadness. Sorrow begins with childhood, the 10-year-old experiencing a joy "so violent/ it was hard to distinguish from pain." Kenyon died of leukemia in April 1995 at age 47. The poems in this volume, being published on the first anniversary of her death, were selected by the poet; her husband, poet Donald Hall, offers an afterword. New poems, gathered in the first section, focus with unsentimental, entirely credible directness on her pending death. In "Eating the Cookies," the poet cleans a closet while nibbling on cookies sent by a cousin: "...the largest cookie,/ which I had saved for last, lay/ solitary in the tin with a nimbus/ of crumbs around it. There would be no more/ parcels from Portland. I took it up/ and sniffed it, and before eating it,/ pressed it against my forehead, because/ it seemed like the next thing to do." This collection is generous, cohesive and moving. (Apr.)

Library Journal

Kenyon died last April after a long struggle with leukemia, but she left behind a canon of poetry that will continue to touch us. In these poems, selections from her four books plus 20 new pieces, we experience the speaker's shadows of depression. Yet despite the tenebrous tone, there is a voice of hope. Reading each poem is like being led from room to room in a best friend's house. The speaker conducting us on this tour is somber in tone and mood yet committed to life in all its griefs and pleasures. The result is rich and intriguing, like "the blossoms pressed in a book/ found again after 200 years." There is no self-pity here, just an acknowledgment that something more powerful controls the speaker's life. This moving collection is truly a wonderful swan song. Highly recommended.-Tim Gavin, Episcopal Academy, Merion, Pa.

School Library Journal