Jeanne Griggs
Description
The sly word play in the title of Jeanne Griggs’ poetry collection After Kenyon is that while this volume indeed follows her retirement after long yea
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rs at Kenyon College, reflecting on her time there and revisiting people and places familiar to all Kenyons, it also contains a number of “after” poems inspired or suggested by other poets. As she explains, “Identifying a previous poem that a new poem is ‘after’ indicates an attempt to recall some part of the feeling that the previous poem conveys and build on it. Writing an ‘after’ poem is an attempt to arouse the memory of that previous poem in order to reveal another perspective on it or even to twist and turn it into something quite different. An ‘after’ poem is not an imitation but a transformation; it is a continuing conversation about an idea or image or form of some previous poem.” Some poets echoed here had specific connections to Kenyon, such as James Wright, Robert Lowell, and John Crowe Ransom, while others seemed to permeate the air on campus. Her poems may follow on works and experiences that preceded them, but they lead the reader into new discoveries on a campus of the mind.
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