Jane Kenyon: The Good Steward

Well, today is the birth-date of Jane Kenyon - yet another poet I'd never heard of, and actually the poet laureate of New Hampshire until her death from leukemia in 1995. Powerful poetry. She struggled with bouts of debilitating depression all her life, and her many efforts in trying to deal with it; to be able to continue living and function. 

As she was completely new to me, I had no idea what her work would be like. Powerful! Raw. Honest. Crafted - not just a splurge of woe. 

I found her poem: Having it Out with Melancholy - Wow!  https://poets.org/poem/having-it-out-melancholy

             

The poem seems to embody the strangeness of her experience of depression and the drugs she had to take. Complete switches of focus and preoccupation; followed by  moments of quiet joy - her dog resting its head on her foot, for example:

'I am overcome 

by ordinary contentment'.  

The whole thing has the effect of her opening her front door - completely naked. As you begin to take this initial shock in, further words reveal the equivalent of noticing she's covered in bruises....oh, and is that blood, or dirt? And then you look up and catch a smile, and warmth in the eyes' - and you think, wtf have I just read?!

'With all the wonder
and bitterness of someone pardoned
for a crime she did not commit'. 

Poetry sustained her, as well as her marriage to fellow poet, Don Hall. In the year between her diagnosis and her death, she corresponded with poet, Haydon Carruth; a compilation of their letters was published as, Letters to Jane. I was sorry I hadn't heard of her before, and happy to have found her now.  

Her poem, Let Evening Come' (1991) is read out in the film 'In Her Shoes', starring Cameron Diaz & Shirley MacLaine. 

      

I will seek out more of her work in future, I'm sure it could be of some comfort to those who are struggling with mental health issues, and the effects of prescribed medication to deal with it. R.I.P. Jane Kenyon, brave soul.