Jane Kenyon, "Evening Sun"

Hi all --

There's so much to talk about but I thought I'd keep today's newsletter simple. I'm really lucky to be surrounded by so much good writing, writing that forces me to reflect on how things like joy and happiness work. I think you'll find today's poem, "Evening Sun" by Jane Kenyon, especially beautiful in this regard. I read it aloud to myself yesterday and was just floored by how much resolve can be contained in a sigh.

Jane Kenyon, "Evening Sun"

Jane Kenyon's startling starting question, immediate and personal for us all: "Why does this light force me back / to my childhood?"

Evening Sun
Jane Kenyon (from Poetry)
  
Why does this light force me back
to my childhood? I wore a yellow
summer dress, and the skirt
made a perfect circle.
                      Turning and turning
until it flared to the limit
was irresistible . . . . The grass and trees,
my outstretched arms, and the skirt
whirled in the ochre light
of an early June evening.
                      And I knew then
that I would live,
and go on living: what sorrow it was;
and still what sorrow ignites
but does not consume
my heart.

She does not aim to satisfy nostalgia. "[T]he light" of the evening sun forces her back to childhood. There's an intensely felt need to address the linkage of present and past. Her memory comes alive in this light as if a prophecy is being recalled. A truth we know the words of but do not understand confronts her.

She recalls an image of herself, an experience of a summer evening. "I wore a yellow / summer dress, and the skirt / made a perfect circle. // Turning and turning until it flared to the limit / was irresistible." The innocent joy of childhood, e.g. making perfect circles because you can, is brought into conversation with Yeats' apocalyptic vision, i.e. "Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer." What exactly is at stake in this personal truth? She tells us "The grass and trees, / my outstretched arms, / and the skirt / whirled in the ochre light." I understand this as suggesting that true innocence is a way of absorbing the world, one endlessly appreciative of the fullness of a moment, and thus is momentary. This is not as simple as "innocence is always good:" plenty weaponize a notion of innocence to cast themselves as the victim, and many want experiences to show gratitude for being alive. To that end, this is not a cynical rejection of experience as nothing but a slog of evils, either. There really are times when the world opens to us, we open to it, and we don't have to think too much.

Of course we can't live there forever. What's funny is what it gives, a "sorrow" that "ignites" / but does not consume / my heart." Sometimes, there's talk about a more honest conception of life being tragic. Rather than "we get what we want and then go to heaven," we admit that life simply will not end well and make the best of it. I see Kenyon as operating in that vein, offering her own vision. The "sorrow" ignites her heart. It does not destroy it. The wistfulness of one lovely moment is openness to others like it. As if moments that matter eternally recur.