Last fall I taught a poetry appreciation class to nonpoetry people, and the poem I brought to our first class was “Let Evening Come” by Jane Kenyon. We discussed the imagery, the repetition, and the feelings the poem aroused in us. I also told them a little about Kenyon.
“Would you be surprised to know she struggled with depression?” I asked them.
No one was.
Let Evening Come
Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.
Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.
Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.
Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.
To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.
Let it come, as it will, and don’t
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.
And yet this is not a poem about depression, per se. Maybe it’s about the long December nights, especially in New Hampshire, where Kenyon served as state poet laureate, writing “it’s dark at four” in “Taking Down the Tree.” Kenyon passed away from leukemia at age 48, so maybe that could be in the mix as well.
Instead of maybes, Kenyon gives us concrete objects: cricket, hoe, barn, shed. She gives us weather: dew, wind, air. She gives us beauty — “let the moon disclose her silver horn” — and she gives us ugliness — “To the bottle in the ditch.” She gives us a woman with needles and yarn, and she gives us God. And she gives us evening, evening, evening, evening.
The refrain “let evening come,” comes irregularly. Struggling to learn this poem felt like my struggle to learn the alto parts of Christmas carols this year in the community choir after spending years as a first soprano. Sometimes the right note sounds wrong, until it’s heard within the chord. That’s this poem: comfort within dissonance.
Instead of writing out the entire poem, I wrote out the cues, almost like a cheat sheet. While memorizing, I used both hands, counting the stanzas on my left and the refrains on my right.
People who memorize poetry speak fondly about how the words will arise from nowhere, just when they need them. Matthew Kreider experienced this after he memorized a poem by Joanna Klink: “Just memorizing it felt like a gift, especially the way it seemed to grow inside me and speak to me…the way it popped into attention on the bus, on a sidewalk — unannounced…,” he told me.
I’d never had that happen until “Let Evening Come.” I chose it for December’s By Heart prompt because, for me and for many others, the holidays are hard. I hoped it would bring me comfort on comfortless days.
Spoiler alert: It did.
The poem seemed to know when it was needed, like the Thursday northwest winds started at 23 miles per hour and gusted to 50, and I had to be outside in the worst of it for a singing Christmas tree rehearsal. On that day Kenyon’s words popped into attention, unannounced, and whispered, “Let the wind die down.” Then I quietly said the whole poem.
It had already grown inside me. It had something to say.
“don’t / be afraid.”
https://soundcloud.com/megan-willome/let-evening-come-by-jane-kenyon
Your Turn
Did you memorize “Let Evening Come” this month? Join our By Heart community and share your audio or video using the hashtags #ByHeart and #MemoriesWithFriends and tagging us @tspoetry. We also welcome photos of your handwritten copy of the poem.
By Heart for January
For the next By Heart gathering, January 25, we’ll memorize Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” (Betcha it doesn’t you take all month.)
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Photo by danzE26, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Megan Willome, author of The Joy of Poetry.
Browse more By Heart
“Megan Willome’s The Joy of Poetry is not a long book, but it took me longer to read than I expected, because I kept stopping to savor poems and passages, to make note of books mentioned, and to compare Willome’s journey into poetry to my own. The book is many things. An unpretentious, funny, and poignant memoir. A defense of poetry, a response to literature that has touched her life, and a manual on how to write poetry. It’s also the story of a daughter who loses her mother to cancer. The author links these things into a narrative much like that of a novel. I loved this book. As soon as I finished, I began reading it again.”
—David Lee Garrison, author of Playing Bach in the D. C. Metro
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- Children’s Book Club: A Very Haunted Christmas - December 9, 2022
- By Heart: ‘The night is darkening round me’ by Emily Brontë - December 2, 2022
L.L. Barkat says
Oh, I love how you recite this, Megan! 🙂 And it really is wonderful how the poem has been there for you, even already.
Thanks for bringing this poem to us, so I could put it in the slowly-building “poetry book in my mind.”
https://soundcloud.com/l-l-barkat/let-evening-come-by-jane-kenyon
Megan Willome says
I love your reading!
Yes, it’s one I’m very glad to have tucked in my heart. Recited it again to myself, last night, at a Christmas event.
L.L. Barkat says
Thank you. 🙂
Do you run into this when reciting from memory—the sense that the poem text surely must be longer and you’ve left something out? Somehow in my head, the text and my recitation of it embody different lengths. That’s the biggest challenge I seem to have.
I’d love to hear how you handle that, if that’s also part of your memory recitation experience.
Megan Willome says
Picturing the stanzas is big for me. For this one I can see most of the individual lines too.
L.L. Barkat says
How do you picture them? I mean, when you recite, is it like you are reading the poem from an internal text?
Sandra Heska King says
I do this, too. I can “see” them on whatever I’m memorizing from–whether it’s the printout I’ve taped to my cupboard door or the page of a book…
Sandra Heska King says
Also… I have to think of tricks like remembering a word is “like” or “as.” Like in the second stanza. To remember the cricket takes up chafing AS a woman takes up her needle–and not LIKE a woman–I remember the letter “A” in the chafing. 🙂
Megan Willome says
L.L. Barkat, yes. The sound of reading the poem aloud is also part of the internalizing.
Sandy, I like how memorizing made you notice the A’s in “as” and “chafing.” That’s something that I think memorizing gives us, a greater noticing.
Matthew Kreider says
Megan, thank you for sharing a small slice of all that came to life from memorizing that flickering poem. My experience was so alive—and led to memorizing so many other poems by Klink and others…
I love how you are inviting people to breathe in poems—into the inside-places. Into the Joy-places.
Poetry doesn’t get more alive than that!
Even now (nearly 2 1/2 years later), Joanna Klink’s poem continues to rise up in me in the most unexpected ways—in the most unexpected places.
Poetry will always whisper to us. Until something flickers. Then grows…
Thanks for all the ways that you bring poetry to life here at Tweetspeak. 🙂
Megan Willome says
Thank you, Matthew.
I love knowing that Klink’s poem is still whispering to you. That encourages me, since I’m so new to memorizing poetry, despite steeping in it for a good 20 years.
Katie says
Megan,
Oh,yes these: “That’s this poem: comfort with dissonance.”
“I hoped it would bring me comfort on comfortless days.”
“It had already grown inside me. It had something to say.”
Thank you for sharing what “Let Evening Come” has meant to you and done for you.
These By Heart poems have given me hope (Ulysses excerpt), and peace, and joy.
Gratefully,
Katie
Megan Willome says
Katie, I’m so glad to hear that! The poems that resonate the most deeply with me usually do impart hope, peace, and joy, although sometimes, like with this one by Kenyon, it is a comfort for dark days.
But hey, today’s the winter solstice, so that seems timely. 🙂
Laura Brown says
So many mentions of and connotations for evening. The line “to air in the lung” makes me think death is in the mix. That bottle in the ditch: for someone always on the lookout for a new bauble for a bottle tree, it could be potential beauty waiting to be noticed.
And your cues (Megan, that note paper …) make me think about that repetition of let. Allow, don’t hinder, maybe even invite. Such a simple word, and so many meanings.
I love the word “disclose” here.
This one was harder to memorize than last month’s for me too. I tried to find some kind of order to the sequence of things or theme to each stanza. Once I sort of had it down, I kept trying to put an extra “the” here or there, and to make the stars come out or come down instead of appear. Sandy, I like your method of remembering which small words to use.
Like last month, I set a tune to it. Once I decided it might be a sort of “last call” waltz, it came together. I hope it doesn’t lessen or cheapen the poem. I’ve been singing it as a sort of evensong.
https://soundcloud.com/laura-brown-948040045/let-evening-come
Megan Willome says
Glad to know I’m not the only one who found this one tricky, Laura. And yes, it’s those little words, especially whether or not “the” appears that tripped me for a while.
I just listened to your recording, and I’m astounded at how well the poem works as a waltz. Just hearing you sing made all the hard parts of memorizing this one melt away. Thank you.
Katie says
Megan,
While I have mastered zero of the “By Heart” poems of the past few months, nonetheless I’ve been buoyed and blessed by them all.
Often when I color I have a print copy of them in front of me. Other times I’ve kept copies on index cards in my car or by my sink.
Alas, I cannot claim to have even one of them “down”, yet they all have been a comfort or boon to me over the shorter days of winter.
I keep a Farmer’s Almanac Calendar over my washer and want to share a found poem from it with you:
“Snowflakes” by John Vance Cheney, American poet (1848-1922)
Falling all the nighttime,
Falling all the day,
Silent into silence,
From the far-away.
Megan Willome says
Katie, I love the idea of you posting these poems where you will see them. I imagine that some of the lines will seep in, especially the ones you look at while coloring.
And what a lovely little poem by John Vance Cheney. Thanks for sharing!
Sandra Heska King says
Finally posted my recitation. 🙂
https://sandraheskaking.com/2019/01/commit-poetry-let-evening-come-by-jane-kenyon/
Megan Willome says
Sandy, how I love your pauses! Thanks so much for contributing to the By Heart community.