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    A Study Guide for Jane Kenyon's "Having it out with Melancholy"
    A Study Guide for Jane Kenyon's "Having it out with Melancholy"
    A Study Guide for Jane Kenyon's "Having it out with Melancholy"
    Ebook33 pages23 minutes

    A Study Guide for Jane Kenyon's "Having it out with Melancholy"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Jane Kenyon's "Having it out with Melancholy," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateAug 26, 2016
    ISBN9781535824569
    A Study Guide for Jane Kenyon's "Having it out with Melancholy"

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      Book preview

      A Study Guide for Jane Kenyon's "Having it out with Melancholy" - Gale

      1

      Having it Out with Melancholy

      Jane Kenyon

      1993

      Introduction

      Jane Kenyon's Having it Out with Melancholy was first published in her 1993 collection Constance. The poem also appears in the posthumous collection Otherwise: New and Selected Poems (1996) and, more recently, on the Academy of American Poets web site at www.poets.org. Constance contains several poems that address issues of physical and mental illness, but probably none so disclosing of Kenyon's own life as Having it Out with Melancholy. While it is rarely a good idea to assume that every word of a seemingly autobiographical poem is an actual account of the poet's real experiences and thoughts, one may safely assume that this one is based on Kenyon's own life. Her battle with chronic depression has been well documented—by herself, her husband, and critics—and the speaker of this poem faces the same fight.

      Having it Out with Melancholy is a lengthy poem, with its one hundred lines broken into nine sections, each with an appropriate title. The parts are arranged chronologically, beginning with the speaker's first encounter with melancholy as an infant, continuing through her young adulthood into her thirties, and concluding at a later age. Throughout the poem, the voice remains calm and matterof-fact, avoiding the painful emotionalism the speaker feels. The language is cool and spare, as Kenyon does an excellent job of describing a tortured life with non-torturing words.

      Author Biography

      Jane Kenyon was born May 23, 1947, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Kenyon eventually attended her hometown university, the University of Michigan, earning a bachelor's degree in 1970 and a master's in 1972. While at Michigan, she was a student of renowned poet, editor, and teacher Donald Hall, with whom she developed a personal relationship throughout the course of her studies. Kenyon and Hall married the same year she received her master's

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