The Blue Bowl

“The Blue Bowl” initially appeared in the June 1987 issue of Poetry magazine and was later published in 1990 as part of Jane Kenyon’s third poetry collection, Let Evening Come. The poem explores several subjects common in Kenyon’s poetry— the natural world, death, depression, and grief—and utilizes spare, natural imagery to highlight her themes. Writing in free verse, Kenyon’s quiet, detailed rendition of the natural world draws comparisons with the English Romantic-era poet John Keats, whose influence is present in the examinations of inarticulable loss that undergird the poem and its portrayal of nature.

“The Blue Bowl” fits neatly within Kenyon’s canon of work, with imagery evocative of her home state of New Hampshire, portraying in deceptively simple language universal human experiences of grief and loss. As a person with manic depression, Kenyon often grapples with how to convey her experience to those unfamiliar with mental illness and how to use poetry to find relief from the burden of her depression. “The Blue Bowl” uses the death of a cat as an opportunity to talk about a much deeper sorrow that Kenyon struggles to articulate, as well as the experience of being in a state of grief as the surrounding world moves on.