Literary Birthday – 23 May – Jane Kenyon

Jane Kenyon was born on 23 May 1947 and died on 22 April 1995.

Jane Kenyon Quotes

1. A poet‘s job is to find a name for everything: to be a fearless finder of the names of things.
2. Be a good steward of your gifts. Protect your time. Feed your inner life. Avoid too much noise. Read good books, have good sentences in your ears. Be by yourself as often as you can. Walk. Take the phone off the hook. Work regular hours.
3. The soul’s bliss and suffering are bound together.
4. The poet’s job is to put into words those feelings we all have that are so deep, so important, and yet so difficult to name, to tell the truth in such a beautiful way, that people cannot live without it.
5. My ear is not working, my poetry ear. I can’t write a line that doesn’t sound like pots and pans falling out of the cupboard.

Jane Kenyon was an American poet and translator. Four collections of Kenyon’s poems were published during her lifetime: From Room to Room (1978), The Boat of Quiet Hours (1986), Let Evening Come (1990) and Constance (1993). She is well-known for Otherwise: New & Selected Poems. In 1994 Kenyon was awarded the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry. She was New Hampshire’s poet laureate at the time of her death.

Image: Fair use to illustrate author, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jane_Kenyon.jpg

by Amanda Patterson

Please click here for our Literary Birthday Calendar

{6}