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The Past
Poems consider Vermont, the poet's family, the memories, parenthood, divorce, love, nature, mortality, and consciousness
- GenresPoetry
Hardcover
First published November 1, 1985
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About the author
Galway Kinnell
120 books190 followersKinnell studied at Princeton University, graduating in 1948. He later obtained a Master's degree from the University of Rochester.
As a young man, Kinnell served in the US Navy and traveled extensively in Europe and the Middle East. His first volume of poetry, What a Kingdom It Was, was published in 1960.
Kinnell became very involved in the U.S. civil rights movement upon his return, joining CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) as a field worker and participating in a number of marches and other civil actions.
Kinnell was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award for Selected Poems (1980), a MacArthur Fellowship, a Rockefeller Grant, the 1974 Shelley Prize of the Poetry Society of America, and the 1975 Medal of Merit from National Institute of Arts and Letters. He served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2001 to 2007.
As a young man, Kinnell served in the US Navy and traveled extensively in Europe and the Middle East. His first volume of poetry, What a Kingdom It Was, was published in 1960.
Kinnell became very involved in the U.S. civil rights movement upon his return, joining CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) as a field worker and participating in a number of marches and other civil actions.
Kinnell was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award for Selected Poems (1980), a MacArthur Fellowship, a Rockefeller Grant, the 1974 Shelley Prize of the Poetry Society of America, and the 1975 Medal of Merit from National Institute of Arts and Letters. He served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2001 to 2007.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 18, 2025
Amazing endings to these poems.
Kinnell has such a way with closing poems that it simultaneously makes you feel sad it ended but grateful for its picturesqueness in doing so.
Kinnell has such a way with closing poems that it simultaneously makes you feel sad it ended but grateful for its picturesqueness in doing so.
April 27, 2025
“I want to lie out / on my back under the thousand stars and think / my way up among them, through them / and a little distance past them, and attain / a moment of absolute ignorance, / if I can, if human mentality lets us. / I have always intended to live forever; / but not until now, to live now. The moment / I have done one or the other, I here swear, / no one will have to drag me, I’ll come / but never will I agree to burn my words.”
September 27, 2022
"Those nights now lie almost farther away than memory goes."
November 1, 2010
There were some moving poems at the beginning, about his childhood and brother. (unfortunately a couple poems with language and vulgarity.)
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews