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Book Reviews Otherwise by Jane Kenyon
This book was published posthumously by the estate of Jane Kenyon, with an afterward by her husband, Donald Hall. This is a compilation of poems pulled from other, earlier publications of hers and the last poems she wrote before passing in 1995 of leukemia. Kenyon's work is atmospheric and descriptive of her life and observations in rural New Hampshire. They also deal frequently with her struggles with depression. She does not tend to vary in form often at all, almost exclusively keeping to medium-length lines and stanzas, 2 - 4 per poem (some variations here) and flush left on the page. This reader didn't mind that—found that it kept the distraction of style jumping from getting in the way of hearing what the poet had to say. It also became a part of who Kenyon was as a poet—sort of "this is what I look like written down." And that look was solid, comforting. One method she uses in writing is what I think of as putting "non-sequiters" in at the end of the poem, a sudden changing of and standing back from the subject that allows her (the poet) and the reader both to get a different perspective on the poem. She also puts a lot of weight in to the titles she chooses. It's as if she is saying: read this whole poem in this context. She sets a stage with her title. The play that follows lives up to it.
In this recent collection of poetry, Sam Hamill sounds like a gentled voice. The book is divided into four sections that seem to follow an order: Buddhist philosophy poems, reflective work mostly presented in one long poem, and two sections that this reader cannot separate out as to theme, but seem to be just an eclectic mix of Hamill's musings and writing inspired by friends, news, and other various stimuli. Though these are long poems, very involved, they are written using common language, with the exception of religious terms from the poet's faith. They are a mix of long and short pieces, but even when the poems are long, they don't feel heavy, an effect that it seems the poet is striving for, successfully, in both his life and work. They do not often have long lines and the stanzas are usually short, light, and with the feeling of being individual tankas or haikus in themselves. The familiarity of the words does not lapse into cliché but only a very few times and often reads as clearly as prose, with no doubts for this reader in what is happening in the poem. Most of the poems are not "action poems" where something is happening, but philosophical, quiet, wondering, filled with praise or sometimes gratitude. 
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