Kenyon

 I went down to Fort Scott for a bird watching trip last weekend. It started to rain, so I went from the nature preserve to the downtown and there was a used book store. I bought the collected poems of Jane Kenyon. She is not the usual kind of poet I admire, but she is respectable and I thought I would give it a try.  I reviewed a book of essays by David Shapiro, and he has a review of Donald Hall (married to Kenyon) that made me reconsider why I have always considered Hall a total mediocrity.  Maybe I was also giving short shrift to Kenyon as well.  

Part of the intention here is to examine my own responses. I find her work understated, unpretentious.  She's talking about her experience without trying to make herself sound superior to other people, in the way Mary Oliver does. She can bring off an ironic effect, but without calling attention to it. You could almost miss it. Sentimentality is rare in this poet.    

The writing is uneven. Sometimes she has simile-itis, where you just put in a simile because that is expected in a poem, rather than from a true artistic necessity. But there are sharp visual observations, attentiveness to what's going on in the immediate surroundings.  

The poems are different enough from one another, so that the effect is like getting to know a person.