This top-drawer collection of translations, interviews, and miscellaneous prose offers readers fresh insights into the life and work of Jane Kenyon, a contemplative poet who has been compared to Emily Dickinson. She lived and worked with her husband, Donald Hall, in Wilmot, New Hampshire, until her death in 1995.

The book opens with Kenyon's spare and elegant translations of poems by Anna Akhmatova, the great Russian soul. Robert Bly encouraged her to take on the project saying, "Whatever you put into translation comes back to you like the twelve baskets of bread and fish left after the feeding of the five thousand." These poems are followed by several wonderful essays on gardening. In one, Kenyon celebrates her peonies: "These are not Protestant-work-ethic flowers. They loll about in gorgeousness; they live for art; they believe in excess. They are not quite decent, to tell the truth. Neighbors and strangers slow their cars to gawk."

Kenyon's Christian sentiments come across vividly in a tribute to her Congregational minister, in a meditation on Mary as a teacher, and in an exquisite poem written after a 1992 trip to India, "Woman, Why Are You Weeping?"

Further insights into this poet's life shine through three interviews conducted in 1993. In one with Bill Moyers, she discusses her battle with manic depression. Throughout the pages of this book, there are many signs of Jane Kenyon's "tenderness toward existence" — a lovely phrase from fellow poet Galway Kinnell.