Donald Hall, Kenyon’s husband and also a poet, wrote the following preface for the song cycle:

“Jane Kenyon’s passion for music was as great as her genius for writing poetry. Before we left Michigan in 1975, we came to know William Bolcom and Joan Morris, who visited us several times on our farm in New Hampshire. When Jane contracted leukemia in 1994, Bill had already set Jane’s “Let Evening Come” in a cantata.

“While she was ill she listened over and over again, with the greatest pleasure, to a tape of Benita Valente singing her words.

“She loved Bill’s music and Benita Valente’s voice. Bill was already planning Briefly It Enters, for Benita Valente, which was a thrill for Jane to imagine. She corresponded with Bill about the choice of poems before she died at forty-seven on 22 April 1995.”