Strong Is Your Hold

by Galway Kinnell

Pulitzer Prize winner Galway Kinnell's first new collection of poetry in more than a decade, with a bound-in CD of poems read by the author

Here is the eleventh book of poems by Galway Kinnell, whom the New York Times has called "one of the true master poets of his generation." In this striking and various collection, he gives us poems of intermingling with the natural world, love poems and evocations of sexuality, poems about his father, his children, poet friends, poet heroes, and mythic figures. Included also is "When the Towers Fell," his stunning requiem for those who died in the World Trade Center on 9/11.

The book's title derives from Walt Whitman's "Last Invocation": "Strong is your hold O mortal flesh, / Strong is your hold O love."

Genres: Poetry

69 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Kinnell 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.

Reviews

[Peycho Kanev · Rating 4 out of 5]

Slipping for leverage
a scrap of quarter-inch wood
under the hammer, I apply
a methodology I learned from
unscrewing stuck bottle lids:
first, put to it the maximum force
you think you can maintain,
and second, maintain it.

[Trisha · Rating 5 out of 5]

When Galway Kinnell died of Leukemia in 2014, the New York Times said he had written poetry that “pushed deep into the heart of human experience.” That’s a good description of the poems in this collection, which cover a wide range of subjects including marriage, parenthood, friendship and death, as well as a powerful memorial to the victims of 9/11 entitled “When the Towers Fell.” This book includes a CD featuring Galway Kinnell reading each poem, often adding a few words of explanation and frequently speaking directly to us, his readers.

I read the book straight through, following the printed words as I listened to his warm and gentle voice. It was a good reminder that poetry is meant to be read out loud, and heard. Like all good poets Galway Kinnell has a gift for using words the way an artist uses paints to create beautiful images like this one: “think of the wren and how little flesh is needed to make a song.”

His poetry is full of wonderful words he seems to have invented purely because of the way they sound and the use he puts them to (words like “spirtle”, “smither”,“noggle”) as well as a few others that can be found in a dictionary but are only used rarely (sloom: a light sleep, howk: to excavate.) He writes about earthy things like a dead vole that is being used as an incubator by beetles who have laid their eggs there, as well as poignantly tender moments like what it felt like to get into bed and nestle up against his wife while she was sleeping.

My favorite poem, “Promissory Note” is his wish that if he should die before his wife, he wants to “cross over” into her so that she will carry his memories along with her’s until “you too lie down and erase us/ both together into oblivion.”

In an obituary published in the New Yorker magazine Kinnell’s friend and fellow poet C.K Williams said his poetry brings us to a way of seeing and thinking and feeling that wasn’t possible before, because it resonates “through so many levels of materiality and spirit, uniting the physical with the moral and passion with thought.” It’s a good description of the poems in this beautiful little book.

[Caitlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

"If I die before you
which is all but certain
then in the moment
before you will see me
become someone dead
in a transformation
as quick as a shooting star’s
I will cross over into you
and ask you to carry
not only your own memories
but mine too until you
too lie down and erase us
both together into oblivion."

-- "Promissory Note"

[James Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's some interesting poetry here. Those poems early in the book are longer narratives, more like extended studies of snapshot moments. In one, Kinnell tells how he finds the frail body of a vole he'd discarded is being buried and stored for food by beetles. Another is about he and his father pulling a nail from a board. After carefully detailing how his father had originally driven the nail years ago, he tells how they both need to cooperate to pull the nail from the stubborn wood, then hammer it straight for use again. I like Kinnell's playful word usage. Plouter and noggle are words he uses to describe the walk of a beetle. Though they're not in my dictionary I wonder if maybe they should be. Scrummage is the movement into the vole's last resting place. Looking it up brought me to the rugby term so that I laughed to imagine the busy huddle of beetles laboring shoulder to shoulder to manhandle the bulky body into an underground chamber. There are astonishingly beautiful poems, too. "How Could She Not" remembers the death of the New Hampshire poet Jane Kenyon. Here Kinnell uses the drone of an airplane's motor in place of Dickinson's sinisterly buzzing fly at the moment of death. The heart of the book is "When the Towers Fell," a long poem about 9/11. It's as moving as anything I've read about that day. The poem recalls the century's energetic thrum of progress and all the upheavals of modern times that end in that convulsive moment, a kind of final, horrific oblation. The words of Whitman and Hart Crane, two robust lovers of New York City, are wonderfully invoked to help bring understanding to the tragedy. This majestic poem is at the center of the book. Ground Zero, if you will. The poet, at the end of the poem, mentions a black hole where "each light, each life" is put out. It's beautifully done.

[Bill Wright · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kinnell titled this his eleventh book of poems after Walt Whitman’s “Last Invocation”: “Strong is your hold O mortal flesh, Strong is your hold O love.” I like the varied subject matter of these poems, as some are intra nature, his mention of historical figures and events (i.e. “When the Towers Fell”), admidst common experiences of everyday life.

[Bethany · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this one, but it just didn't do anything for me.

[Plusilikefrogs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Possibly my favorite collection of poems

[Pris robichaud · Rating 5 out of 5]

Strong Is Your Hold O Mortal Flesh, 18 Jan 2007


The book's title derives from Walt Whitman's Last Invocation: Strong is your hold O mortal flesh, / Strong is your hold O love. In 2000, Galway Kinnell, another poet who draws from life, wrote in the preface to "A New Selected Poems": "For many years, I have felt exasperated by my intractable habit of working at certain poems again and again, over long spans of time. But in recent years I have come to accept that, at least in the case of a complex project, this is simply how I write. It makes me think of the digestive process of a Methuselah-ian ruminant animal, one with many many stomachs, that chews its cud for decades (though I don't want to carry this analogy to its logical alimentary end)." This is a typically earthy expression from a writer who, in the exuberant poem "The Bear," evoked a poetic alter ego stalking with knives in his fists and subsisting on "bear blood alone."

Galway Kinnell has been a MacArthur Fellow and the state poet of Vermont. He has won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award and has published several books of translations, including the poetry of Francois Villon and Rainer Maria Rilke. For many years he was the Erich Maria Remarque Professor of Creative Writing at New York University. He is currently a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

My best friend introduced me to Galway Kinnell with the poem 'The Bear' and I fell in love with this poet. 'Strong Is Your Hold' is the eleventh book of poems by Galway Kinnell. The New York Times has called him a true master poet of his generation. Included also is 'When the Towers Fell', a requiem for those who died in the World Trade Center on 9/11. This book of poems is so special to me. It speaks of relationships; family, lovers, father and child, man and wife, sister and brother, friends, and heroes.

There are 24 remarkable poems in the set and one poem for the ages that will forever stand on its own, 'When The Towers Fall'. The last stanza speaks to me as no others about our fellow man and that terrible day;


In our minds the glassy blocks succumb over and over
slamming down floor by floor into themselves
blowing up as if in reverse, exploding.

downward and rolling downward'
the way, in the days of the gods, a god
might rage through the streets, overtaking the fleeing

As each tower goes down, it concentrates
into itself transforms itself
infinitely slowly into a black hole

infinitesimally small: mass
without space, where each light
each life, put out, lies down within us.

and my favorite poem 'Promissory Note'

If I die before you
which is all but certain
then in the moment
before you will see me
become someone dead
in a transformation
as quick as a shooting Star
I will cross over into you
and ask you too carry
not only your memories
but mine too until you
too lie down and erase us
both together into oblivion.

"He uses spare, natural imagery to explore death and tragedy, as in the solemn ''When the Towers Fell.'' For enthusiasts with Google-era attention spans, Strong Is Your Hold includes a CD of the professorially voiced poet reading the entire collection." EW

'Strong Is Your Hold' is a book of poems to be revered and to read often. It is to be rejoiced, and to remember our relationships as no others. This is a testament to a man who can put into words those feelings that surface when we truly love. Highly Recommended.
prisrob 1/17/06

[Tim Mayo · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very powerful collection. Coming with an accompanying CD of Kinnell reading the poems, you can sit down, read through and listen to whole the book at the same time in just over an hour. An incredible experience!

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

I only know of this poet due to reading his obit. I listened to this disc twice. I would have liked to have had a hard copy to read along with the author.

[Caspar "moved to storygraph" Bryant]

whitmanian piece, lucking into the vermont-y amber as the cover suggests. Bears an small children and foxes and the like run through the bushes. Actually some of the best work in here is about Galway's youngins. BUt mostly I'm captivated by his LINE, how committed to ending each of them he is & how unlike our pretence to being forward thinking. the poem 'Everyone Was In Love' is really unbelievable & gets you to hold yr breath three lines in. a 9/11 elegy-poem, 'When the Towers Fell' is fragmentary (as is his way, one of those fellas that works in wonky stanzas, no regular lines) & drops into polish, french , german. I like that I didn't know the german was Celan , and got to just assume it was a heavy drinking person , an enthusiast. Was I supposed to have recognised the quotation? I like it better this way

[Renée Roehl · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5

I've read this book before but I felt called to read it again. Cause, you know...Kinnell. This book contains one of my all time favorite poems and I have more than a few, but this one, "It All Comes Back," makes my heart tingle. Read it for this alone, but read the poem aloud, too. Be still my heart.

I own this book and it has a CD of Kinnell reading all the poems. I love hearing poets read and comment on their work.

There are other Kinnell books one should dive into like his classic (is it a classic? it is to me!), "The Book of Nightmares," but pretty much any book of his will have poems you just can't let go of.

[Troy Tradup · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of these poems feel like they're trying too hard, but there are a couple of absolute stunners: "When the Towers Fell" and "How Could She Not."

A couple of lines that called to me specifically:

"They take the straitjacket off. So what? The lunatic continues to hug himself."

and

"As if there were mechanisms of death so mutilating to existence that no one gets over them, ever, not even the dead."

[Maughn Gregory · Rating 5 out of 5]

This entire collection was gorgeous but there were two poems I will never forget: "The Quick and the Dead" and "When the Towers Fell," which had me weeping quietly on a long plane flight east to west.

[Jenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

I pulled out Strong is Your Hold so I could read "Shelley" to my Brit Lit class and ended up reading through the rest of the poems. "Shelley" continues to be far and away the standout piece of the collection, though there are a few other lovely ones.

[Carlton · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful book of poems

[Matt Ely · Rating 5 out of 5]

While not every selection was worth five stars, there were several that I'd give six if I could. At times it feels more clear-eyed than reality. There is a lot here that I hope to revisit regularly.

[Janée Baugher · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a lovely opening poem, "The Stone Table." This reader got the feeling that this author was investigating his waning life and writing from the space of nostalgia.

[RAD · Rating 5 out of 5]

(review forthcoming)

[j.e.rodriguez · Rating 2 out of 5]

"I open my eyes to see how the night / is progressing."

[areej ♡]

“This empty chair. It’s for you.
Come.” Oh my dears. Yes, except
of course I’m only dreaming you,
the impossibility of you, of being
one of you. I can’t.

[lonner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Compared to much of Kinnell’s early work, these poems are bland and uninspiring.

[Tom Romig · Rating 5 out of 5]

Haunting, evocative, often earthy, this fine collection encourages the reader to entertain life's vital concerns.

[Jeffrey (Akiva) Savett · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the first book of Kinnell's I've read and I'm very very impressed. Before I even mention the poems themselves, one MUST listen to the CD of Kinnell reading the poems in this volume that comes with the book. On many occasions, the two differ in small and large ways and it makes for an excellent study into Kinnell's careful choices.
There isn't a single poem in this collection lacking a line, a word, a phrase, and image, or a notice that inspired my awe. In terms of content, the poems in this collection are mostly pastoral and bound up in the doings of the natural world. But unlike say, a poet like Mary Oliver, who I like and respect very much, Kinnell's elaborate attention to nature always sees something beyond, into the human. He is inspired by the trees and the stone writing table behind his home, but only because of what they mean TO and FOR him and his family; his appreciation is not an end in itself. This is manifested pervasively; whether he's describing his children running into the house proudly shouldering dozens of garden snakes, walking us through the elaborate rituals of setting fire to a pile of brush or finding a most surprising and amazing metaphor regarding earthworms in a poem titled "Sex," Kinnell is always finding what the Earth allows us to say. The longest poem in this collection, "Pulling A Nail" is also its best. In reading it, Kinnell challenges our patience as the speaker of the poem spends quite a few pages describing the intricate processes of pulling a nail from a piece of wood which his father had hammered there decades before. Kinnell tells us that towards the end, "the poem opens up," and he is true to his word. Kinnell is a master and is required reading for any serious poet or any lover of grounded and accessible poets who manage to astonish and craze using simply an attuned ear, a sensitive eye, and an exquisite taste for language.

[Corin · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Rick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mr. Kinnell turned 80 this year and I bought this and his New Selected with the understanding that I would attend a celebration of his birthday at Cooper Union. Unfortunately I dawdled over dinner that evening and arrived at the Great Hall only fifteen minutes before the program was to start and was shut out. Poetry lives! The free event was overflowing and they were admitting no more audience members, even as people piled up behind the descending staircase. “What about standing room?” Nope, all full. “Can you pipe in the event to another hall?” Nope, not set up for that. And the accumulating crowd of the disappointed began to leave, swimming upstream against the still arriving, soon-to-be disappointed admirers of Mr. Kinnell and friends (Mark Doty, Marie Howe, Sharon Olds, Yusef Komunyakaa, and many others). Ah well, I had the books and the memory of Mr. Kinnell's appearance at Stanley Kunitz's memorial at the 92nd Street Y. The new collection, Strong Is Your Hold, is a continuation of Kinnell's own amazing life-work journey, mortality shadowing his days but only to sharpen his craft, his attachments, and his ability to find the vital in each moment of true living. This fine collection will join New Selected on the shelf but, like it, collect no dust there. It is simply too beautiful and too wise to sit too far from away.

[Robert Beveridge · Rating 4 out of 5]

Galway Kinnell, Strong Is Your Hold (Houghton Mifflin, 2006)

I have to admit that up until now I've never run across a Galway Kinnell poem I've liked. I rather expected to pick this up, skim through it, write a generic bad review, and move on. But it seems Kinnell has (with the exception of one more-of-the-same poem) mellowed out a great deal as he's gotten older and turned his thoughts to interpersonal, rather than global, politics:

“Now beings what could be called
carpenters' arm wrestling, and also,
in this case, transrealmic combat
between father and son.
We clasp right hands (the flared
part of the hammer handle,
his hand) and press right elbows
tot he hemlock (the curved
hammer head, his steel elbow) and pull.
Or rather, I pull, he holds fast, lacking
the writ to drag me down where he lies.
(“Pulling a Nail”)

Not the kind of thing that seems tailor-made for plastering on a placard and taking down to Washington when marching in a demonstration. And thank heaven for that. When Kinnell focuses his attention on the little things, globally, that mean so much to us on a personal level, he shines. A very pleasant surprise. *** ½

[Carolyne Mistake · Rating 4 out of 5]

Galway Kinnell is one of those poets who I read and think, "crap, how am I ever going to live up to that." This book was no different, but at 80 years old it is a bit encouraging. Perhaps if I am writing what I am now, I will be almost as good if I make it to 80. The good aspects of this book are the reflective qualities, the looking back on his life, the gentleness and honesty with which he handles death, without glorifying or sentimentalizing. The less wonderful aspects are that he is 80 years old and therefore the book is at times a bit hard to relate to, as opposed to his older poetry that has an urgency to it. (But, in such a hectic, impulsive world, isn't it refreshing to sit down with a grandfather and listen to poetry and stories?) Also, some poems aren't quite as strong as others, or don't feel right for this book, feeling more like they were published because this may be his last collection. This book also comes with a wonderful cd of him reading the poems, with intros to each of them.

[Tracy O · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've seen Galway Kinnell read and so I've got kind of a starry-eyed fan thing going on for him. He's a GREAT, moving reader. And, I love his poetry. This book is everything I love about how he can evoke a moment, but also invest it with something transcendent (sp?). I'm not sure how he achieves the elevation of the everyday birthday party or carpentry project into something that feels like your life depends on it, but he does. Even without the incredibly moving 9/11 and Jane Kenyon poems this poetry would make you realize the importance of the the every-day.

I don't love everything he writes. I loved Mortal Acts, Mortal Words, but I only kind of liked The Book of Nightmares and while I appreciated the ghazal form in Imperfect Thirst it didn't feel like the best way for him to express himself (hmmm, who do I think I am? - anyway - I'm just being honest). This book is everything you want him to write and you'll want to read it again and again. Also, BONANZA! it comes with a CD so you can listen to him read his work, and it's, of course, superb.

[Mindy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes, on particularly frustrating days, I just need to go someplace else for a minute. Unfortunately, I don't always have time to sit and read a chapter of a novel. "Strong is Your Hold" by Galway Kinnell is the perfect miniature escape. It brought me back to the part of my brain that I prefer. One of my favorite poems in the book is "The Stone Table." I loved this stanza:

We speak in whispers: fifty feet away,
under a red spruce, a yearling bear
lolls on its belly eating clover.
Abruptly it sits up. Did I touch my wine glass
to the table, setting it humming?
The bear peers about with the bleary undressedness
of old people who have mislaid their eyeglasses.
It ups its muzzle and sniffs. It fixes us,
whirls, and plunges into the woods—
a few cracklings and shatterings, and all is still.

I carried the image of a young bear searching for his mislaid eyeglasses like a little old man all day. In fact, I call on that image often. I smile and slip back into the comfortable part of my brain.