Let Evening Come

Jane Kenyon was an award-winning poet and translator who often wrote bucolic-inspired poems from her home on a farm in New Hampshire. “Let Evening Come,” published in 1990 as part of Kenyon’s third collection of poetry of the same name, contemplates the natural shifts in nature and life. Kenyon represents these shifts through symbols and images such as light moving to darkness and life moving towards death. Kenyon’s poetry is described as quiet, soft, and stunningly beautiful. Called a Keatsian poet (after the Romanticist John Keats), Kenyon’s poems are contemplative and draw on the natural surroundings to comment on larger questions about life and existence. She often invokes the domestic and at times slips into the pastoral, calling on and idealizing rural, countryside life. “Let Evening Come” is a prime example of Kenyon’s fixation with coupling the outside and the inside, nature and the household or farm.

While most of Kenyon’s poems are in free verse and told from the first-person point of view, “Let Evening Come” is a unique addition to her oeuvre. Written from a third-person omniscient point-of-view and in a varied

Unlock all 18 pages of this Study Guide

Plus, gain access to 8,900+ more expert-written Study Guides.

Including features:

+ Mobile App

+ Printable PDF

+ Literary AI Tools

Unlock Full Library