SUE MACLEOD READS JANE KENYON
Jane
Kenyon’s “Having it Out with Melancholy,” from her 1993 collection Constance, is one poem I’ve never forgotten. It opens with
the narrator as an infant, depression (the personified Melancholy) waiting
“behind a pile of linen in the nursery”:
... you lay down
on top of me, pressing
the bile of desolation into every pore.
And from that day on
everything under the sun and moon
made me sad—even the yellow
wooden beads that slid and spun
along a spindle on my crib ...
I only appeared to belong to my
mother,
to live among blocks and cotton
undershirts
with snaps; among red tin lunch boxes
...
Kenyon’s
skill is evident throughout the poem. In the excerpt here, there’s the horrific
opening metaphor; the great concrete details; and, for a precise example, her
use of both enjambment and sound tools to turn “yellow” into a link between the
sun and the spinning beads.
But what
makes this poem stand out for me isn’t the poetry per se—it’s how Kenyon put
poetry to work to serve a documentary purpose. She showed us (only partially,
of course; but for me, at least, indelibly) what clinical depression is, and
how monumental.
When I
first read “Having it Out,” a close friend had just been hospitalized with
depression, and a neighbourhood acquaintance had committed suicide because of
it. So I’d been reading, thinking and talking about it. Then, in a mere five
pages, Jane Kenyon increased my understanding at least tenfold. Poetry can do
this sort of thing, but seldom gets credit for it.
Knowing
that Kenyon struggled with depression, I celebrated her audacity in talking
back to it, “having it out.” Thanks to pharmaceuticals, the narrator “come[s]
back to/ marriage and friends” and to her “desk, books, and chair.” But she
knows the reprieve is temporary: “Unholy ghost,/ you are certain to come
again.”
I’m sure
Jane Kenyon didn’t triumph over depression in her life. (Who does?) But in this poem she did. By exposing Melancholy and letting her readers watch
it in action, she brought it down a notch. That’s another reason the poem
stands out for me. What a strong sense of connection that gave me, as a reader.
How moving, to have taken part.
Sue MacLeod’s most recent book of poetry is Mood Swing, with Pear (Signature Editions, 2016). She is also a Young Adult novelist.
Jane Kenyon (1947–1995) was born in Ann Arbor,
Michigan, and lived for many years in Wilmot, New Hampshire, with her husband,
the poet Donald Hall. She is the celebrated author of four books of poems, as
well as Otherwise:
New and Selected Poems (1996).
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| Image: Wikipedia |