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.

-- Jane KenyonJane Kenyon (1947 - 1995)

Jane Kenyon (1947 - 1995) was an American poet and translator. Her work is often characterized as simple, spare, and emotionally resonant.

Kenyon was born in 1947 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and grew up in the midwest. She earned a B.A. from the University of Michigan in 1970 and an M.A. in 1972. While a student at the University of Michigan, Kenyon met the poet

Donald Hall; though he was some twenty years her senior, she married him in 1972, and they moved to Eagle Pond Farm, his ancestral home in New Hampshire.

Four collections of Kenyon's poems were published during her lifetime: Constance (1993), Let Evening Come (1990), The Boat of Quiet Hours (1986), and From Room to Room (1978). She spent some years translating the poems of Anna Akhmatova from Russian into English (published as Twenty Poems of Anna Akhmatova, 1985), and she championed translation as an important art at which every poet should try her hand.

Kenyon was New Hampshire's poet laureate when she died in April of 1995 from leukemia. When she died, she was working on editing Otherwise: New and Selected Poems, which was released posthumously in 1996. In 1999, Graywolf Press published A Hundred White Daffodils: Essays, Interviews, the Akhmatova Translations, Newspaper Columns, and One Poem, which most reviewers regarded as less stellar than her previous work but worthwhile nonetheless. In 2004, Ausable Press published Letters to Jane, a compilation of letters written by the poet Hayden Carruth to Kenyon in the year between her diagnosis and her death.

Kenyon's poems are filled with rural images: light streaming through a hayloft, shorn winter fields. She wrote frequently about wrestling with depression, which plagued her throughout her adult life. Though a subtle faith permeates her poems, they are not overtly Christian, though her essays reveal the important role church came to play in her life once she and Hall moved to Eagle Pond Farm.

Biography by: This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License and uses material adapted in whole or in part from the Wikipedia article on Jane Kenyon.

Band Work Commissioned by NHBDA 

The Old Man of the Mountain by James Curnow was commissioned by the New Hampshire Band Directors Association and first performed by the Directors Reading Band during the New England Band Directors Institute at PSC on Saturday, July 10, with the composer conducting.

The composer wrote the following about the story behind the music:

As distinguishable as he may be among the rocks above the Pemigewasset River in the White Mountain National Forest, the Old Man of the Mountain’s stone face reveals little about his background. As on legend relates, Chief Pemigewasset fell in love with Minerva, daughter of the Mohawk chief, his bitterest enemy, and she left to be with Pemigewasset and his tribe.

One spring, Minerva’s father became ill, so she left to be at his side. Dreading the thought of being parted from Minerva, Pemigewasset traveled with her as far as his failing health would allow, and his braves set up camp on top of a cliff where he could wait for her return.

When the following spring arrived, the braves returned to the high cliff campsite to discover the unfortunate outcome of Pemigewasset. Traveling home to confirm the sad news of Pemigewasset’s death, the braves glanced back to pay homage to the site and to remember their chief when, in astonishment, they discovered that molded into the peak of the cliff was the face of Pemigewasset. Today his face still receives homage, although he is more commonly known as the Old Man of the Mountain.

The Old Man of the Mountain seeks to portray through music, the many diverse aspects of the Pemigewasset legend and the beauty and grandeur of the White Mountain National Forest. The music is gentle and expressive, dynamic and energetic, and strives to capture the many contrasts in the fascinating legend and beautiful countryside.

This work is Grade III in difficulty and will be published and recorded by Curnow Music Press in Spring 1999.

NHBDA has also commissioned composer Robert Sheldon to compose a Grade II band work. This new piece, also on a New Hampshire theme, will receive its first reading in July at the 1999 New England Band Directors Institute.