Post by louisa on Nov 3, 2008 3:54:48 GMT 2
Let Evening Come
by Jane Kenyon
Submitted by Shayla Mollohan
This poem came to me immediately. I have turned to "Let Evening Come" seemingly hundreds of times for affirmation since discovering it. Her words not only feel like a direct connection with my soul but with my experiences -- as though she had somehow been present during times of my most profound grief. How easily her images have become mine! Maybe this has been so because we shared a love for rural living which I've picked up on in reading her work in _Otherwise_. I'm descended from people who'd spent half their lives working farms. Sometimes in reading this poem, a "chink" of light in the barn becomes the crack of light tracing my dying father's hair; the crickets "chafing in the dark" and I'm suddenly there listening, a young girl on our back stoop after Mama died; and some inexplicable quiet mixed with peculiar points of awareness that usually go unnoticed (a bottle in the ditch, dew on a hoe), yet now fixed among these memories during and after dear ones passed. When my brother took his life months ago and far away, I sent this poem to the bishop as part of my eulogy. Even attendees who had been exposed to little poetry were emphatically moved. Jane Kenyon certainly understood the nature of grief. But more she understood how to measure that with hope and knowing. Like a friend who stood next to you at the wake reminding you, "Life goes on, my sister..."
Read Let Evening Come at:
www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16019
More poems and more about Jane Kenyon at:
www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=3720
To buy a copy of Let Evening Come or other books by the poet:
www.alibris.com/search/books/author/Kenyon,%20Jane
This listing is current as of Nov. 2, 2008
by Jane Kenyon
Submitted by Shayla Mollohan
This poem came to me immediately. I have turned to "Let Evening Come" seemingly hundreds of times for affirmation since discovering it. Her words not only feel like a direct connection with my soul but with my experiences -- as though she had somehow been present during times of my most profound grief. How easily her images have become mine! Maybe this has been so because we shared a love for rural living which I've picked up on in reading her work in _Otherwise_. I'm descended from people who'd spent half their lives working farms. Sometimes in reading this poem, a "chink" of light in the barn becomes the crack of light tracing my dying father's hair; the crickets "chafing in the dark" and I'm suddenly there listening, a young girl on our back stoop after Mama died; and some inexplicable quiet mixed with peculiar points of awareness that usually go unnoticed (a bottle in the ditch, dew on a hoe), yet now fixed among these memories during and after dear ones passed. When my brother took his life months ago and far away, I sent this poem to the bishop as part of my eulogy. Even attendees who had been exposed to little poetry were emphatically moved. Jane Kenyon certainly understood the nature of grief. But more she understood how to measure that with hope and knowing. Like a friend who stood next to you at the wake reminding you, "Life goes on, my sister..."
Read Let Evening Come at:
www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16019
More poems and more about Jane Kenyon at:
www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=3720
To buy a copy of Let Evening Come or other books by the poet:
www.alibris.com/search/books/author/Kenyon,%20Jane
This listing is current as of Nov. 2, 2008