A short life of the author
Jane Kenyon (1947–1995) was an American poet born in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She married the poet Donald Hall in 1972, and the couple moved to Eagle Pond Farm, Hall’s ancestral home in Wilmot, New Hampshire, where they lived and wrote for the rest of their married life. Kenyon published four collections during her lifetime — From Room to Room (1978), The Boat of Quiet Hours (1986), Let Evening Come (1990), and Constance (1993) — and was working on a fifth when she was diagnosed with leukaemia in 1994. She died in April 1995.
Her poems are short, precise, and emotionally direct — rooted in the daily rhythms of a New Hampshire farmstead (gardens, dogs, weather, light on snow) and shadowed by her lifelong struggle with clinical depression. “Having It Out with Melancholy” and “Otherwise” are among the most widely anthologised American poems of the late twentieth century.
Otherwise: New and Selected Poems (1996, Graywolf Press), published posthumously, brought her work to a far larger audience and remains in print.
Collecting Kenyon
From Room to Room (1978, Alice James Books) — her first collection, published by a small cooperative press — is the scarcest title and brings $200–$500 in fine condition. The Graywolf Press collections are more common. Signed copies exist from readings and are modestly valued. Donald Hall’s memoir The Best Day the Worst Day (2005) about their life together is a companion collectible.