A Hundred White Daffodils by Jane Kenyon (St. Paul, MN: Graywolf Press, 1999)Jane Kenyon is best know as a poet, but she wrote prose as well and this volume collects this work along with the Akhmatova translations, interviews with Kenyon, and the poem "Woman, Why are you Weeping?"
I have been planning new gardens recently, and phrases from the essays Kenyon wrote for the end page of Yankee keep popping into my mind.
"Sensible people grow beans. I grow peonies, campanula, roses, lilies, astilbe, bee balm. No matter how many flowers, there are never enough, and I harbor Napolionic tendencies toward floral expansion." (p. 48)
As New England begins thinking about saying "Good-bye and keep cold" to its gardens, these essays describe the experience beautifully. "Bulbs Planted in the Fall" originally appeared as a column in the Concord Monitor and is another good choice from this volume for this time of year.
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