An Appreciation of Jane Kenyon's Poem SUN and MOON

If you're unfamiliar with the poem, you can read it here:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=175708

This poem holds the sort of sadness which for some reason seems beautiful to me - something coming from the fine way Jane Kenyon's poem celebrates things (and people) soon gone, soon forgotten. It's like Charles Simic said - Greek Gods were thought jealous of the lyric poet, he who celebrated not a God, but rather "the beauty of what passes away and is bound to be forgotten."

If this is a poet's goal in expression, the language is better if it is concise, clean and mildly-arresting. Sun and Moon's sense of quiet (sad and quiet like Larkin or Kees consistently were) is naturally appealing to me, personally; still it's not an vague appreciation I have for the poem. There are things to appreciate which can be understood 'objectively' and in the way of mechanics. But these don't add up to the overall atmosphere. They might lead up, but not add up, completely. The looking "as from a great height" at things - that sense captured well in this poem - occurs throughout and shapes its totality.

And the mechanics (if you don't mind ripping into the poem and looking at this and that separately) are refined, and carefully executed. The poem contains few adjectives, and nearly every one is a necessary bit of information - not an embellishment. There's one strophe where there are two exciting exceptions to this, wonderful word combinations, one quickly following the other: "slow degrees" and "outlandish sadness." The second especially is both thought-out and extremely emotional.

Kenyon's verb choices are strong and unique, yet still understated - perturbed, stacked, serpentined, waned, accrued. How difficult it is to press ourselves for both affecting expression and truth, as we attempt to relate bits of our emotional stories, our invisible lives! Are we keeping it real? One wonders if she really had a vision of soul-pelts, or if it is a poetic device. Eventually one wonders. But many readings of the poem gave me many pleasures before I even thought to consider this. Must mean something.

There are small wonders all over the poem, and these are relayed in the simplest of language. The two nurses whispering need no commentary. Those four simple lines perfectly show the scene, and something in their flatness and brevity tells of the writer's state of mind. I'm not sure, but I think I hear a bit of anger (quiet anger) or at least impatience in the tone. So the four lines as written - as I read them - tell even more than of the scene, and do this without using any poetic 'devices' a less serious poet might seek out and stuff in the stanza, to make it seem like more of a poem.

Kenyon describes herself here as an "early-middle-aged-woman." She is uncomfortable enough with her age to further modify herself as "early" - a comforting word, perhaps. This hyphenated phrase set on its own line has read both sweet and bittersweet to me. I won't explain. The gentle sadness, once again.

And O, that stanza before the final one! The images are mostly under- or not-described, though the emotional content is vividly set before us, even through the abstractions of slow degrees and outlandish sadness (had to mention those again).

If you can understand the sort of feeling that leads us to say "heartbreaking" sometimes - well, that's how it seems to me when I think of looking at things with only something like delight. It's sad to withdraw from involvement, even from the comforts of your past. But that's what we're all doing, as we grow older. Even as we savor our memories of people and places, we are growing further away from them, they might been seen as from a great height, slipping away, over there like the table in the hall. What a perfect ending, in tone, image and resolution to the journey within the poem.

As much as I hate to say this, I don't feel it to be a perfect poem. Boy, I'm presumptuous, aren't I? Well, let me tell you what bothers me anyway. In a poem so tight and at the same time full of understatement and depth, I don't understand why Kenyon included the line No separation between life and art. It's the only thing in the poem that really bothers me. The four lines preceding it work on a deep level and I suppose for the careful reader they would be enough. Perhaps if the line had been excluded we might not reach the exact conclusion it draws. But then again, I think without the line we dig around deeper in ourselves for truer connections, even if they are difficult to word. Read the poem without the line: what do you think?