The poet Jane Kenyon, born in 1947, married her college poetry professor, Donald Hall, before moving to his family’s ancestral farm in New Hampshire. The two poets lived and wrote there for 20 years, during which they were beset by a series of illnesses and medical crises. Kenyon published only four books before dying of leukemia at the age of 47, but she is widely recognized today as one of America’s premier lyric poets. Although she struggled with depression throughout her life, this poem brings a message of hope.
Sue Ellen Thompson, of Oxford, MD, is the first “featured writer” in the Delmarva Review. These poems are from a collection in the journal’s first edition, in 2008 edition. Among her published works, a fifth book of poems, THEY, was published in 2014. She has been an instructor at The Writer’s Center, in Bethesda, since 2007, and has previously taught at Middlebury College, Binghamton University, the University of Delaware, and Central Connecticut State University. She received the 2010 Maryland Author Award from the Maryland Library Association.
Wilson Wyatt says
This is lovely. There’s nothing like the power and grace of good writing, especially read by an outstanding poet.