SOURCE: Breslin, Paul. “Four and a Half Books.” Poetry 170, no. 4 (July 1997): 230-33.

In the following excerpt, Breslin details the evolution of Kenyon's poems from From Room to Room to Otherwise: New and Selected Poems. Breslin sadly notes the irony that Kenyon was just beginning to expand and mature creatively at the time of her death.

The late Jane Kenyon's posthumous Otherwise: New and Selected Poems reminds us of what a fine poet we lost by her premature death. A group of twenty previously uncollected poems opens the book, followed by generous selections from the four volumes published during her lifetime, in chronological order. It is good to see the new poems first, but only by re-reading them after all the rest does one recognize that a significant expansion in Kenyon's range had just begun when her last illness cut it short.

Certain virtues were already present in the...