The Blue Bowl

"Let Evening Come" by Jane Kenyon (1990)

The titular poem of her 1990 collection, Kenyon’s “Let Evening Come” makes use of anaphora, or the repetition of a phrase at the beginning of multiple poetic lines, to create a lush portrait of the rural landscape of her home. She infuses the poem with her signature undercurrent of mortality. “Let Evening Come” is one of Kenyon’s most anthologized poems, even making an appearance in the 2005 film In Her Shoes, in which the character Maggie reads the poem aloud.

"Having It out with Melancholy" by Jane Kenyon (1992)

Beginning with an epigraph from Anton Chekov’s The Cherry Orchard, Kenyon’s “Having It out with Melancholy” examines her experience with depression and medication in nine parts. The poem begins with Kenyon’s childhood, describing depression’s presence in her life at an early stage, and moves through experiences of medication, treatment, the influence and opinions of family and friends.

"Otherwise" by Jane Kenyon (1996)

Kenyon’s poem of gratitude in the wake of impending mortality uses a repeating refrain, “It might have been otherwise,” to great rhetorical effect. In the months before her death, Kenyon wrote 20 new poems and selected others for her collection Otherwise, published posthumously in 1996.