More about Jane Kenyon

Jane Kenyon (1947-1995) was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and attended the University of Michigan. She received her B.A. in 1970 and her M.A. in 1972. The same year she married a teacher at the university, the poet Donald Hall. After their marriage they moved to Eagle Pond Road in Wilmont, New Hampshire, which had been the home of Hall's family for several generations.

Although Kenyon was to write joyously about her life in rural New Hampshire, she suffered from severe depression throughout her marriage, and her final poems document her struggle against leukemia. Her first book, Let Evening Come, was published in 1990. She described the quiet life she led with her husband in many poems, but she and Hall were also well known through his books about life on their farm. Shortly before her death they were the subject of a television documentary that depicted their shared life of poetry and the changing seasons of their rural countryside.

Kenyon's poetry is delicate and subtle, a poetry of shadings and quiet musings. The poet Carol Muske wrote of her, "These poems surprise beauty at every turn and capture truth at its familiar New England slant."

-Taken from Bedford/St. Martin's Poetry site