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A New Selected Poems
That Silent Evening
I will go back to that silent evening
when we lay together and talked in silent voices,
while outside slow lumps of soft snow
fell, hushing as they got near the ground,
with a fire in the room, in which centuries
of tree went up in continuous ghost-giving-up,
without a crackle, into morning light.
Not until what hastens went slower did we sleep.
When we got home we turned and looked back
at our tracks twining out of the woods,
where the branches we brushed against let fall
puffs of sparkling snow, quickly, in silence,
like stolen kisses, and where the scritch scritch scritch
among the trees, which is the sound that dies
inside the sparks from the wedge when the sledge
hits it off center telling everything inside
it is fire, jumped to a black branch, puffed up
but without arms and so to our eyes lonesome,
and yet also--how can we know this?--happy!
in shape of chickadee. Lying still in snow,
not iron-willed, like railroad tracks, willing
not to meet until heaven, but here and there
treading slubby kissing stops, our tracks
wobble across the snow their long scratch.
So many things that happen here are really little more,
if even that, than a scratch, too. Words, in our mouths,
are almost ready, already, to bandage the one
whom the scritch scritch scritch, meaning if how when
we might lose each other, scratches scratches scratches
from this moment to that. Then I will go back
to that silent evening, when the past just managed
to overlap the future, if only by a trace,
and the light doubles and casts
through the dark a sparkling that heavens the earth.
I will go back to that silent evening
when we lay together and talked in silent voices,
while outside slow lumps of soft snow
fell, hushing as they got near the ground,
with a fire in the room, in which centuries
of tree went up in continuous ghost-giving-up,
without a crackle, into morning light.
Not until what hastens went slower did we sleep.
When we got home we turned and looked back
at our tracks twining out of the woods,
where the branches we brushed against let fall
puffs of sparkling snow, quickly, in silence,
like stolen kisses, and where the scritch scritch scritch
among the trees, which is the sound that dies
inside the sparks from the wedge when the sledge
hits it off center telling everything inside
it is fire, jumped to a black branch, puffed up
but without arms and so to our eyes lonesome,
and yet also--how can we know this?--happy!
in shape of chickadee. Lying still in snow,
not iron-willed, like railroad tracks, willing
not to meet until heaven, but here and there
treading slubby kissing stops, our tracks
wobble across the snow their long scratch.
So many things that happen here are really little more,
if even that, than a scratch, too. Words, in our mouths,
are almost ready, already, to bandage the one
whom the scritch scritch scritch, meaning if how when
we might lose each other, scratches scratches scratches
from this moment to that. Then I will go back
to that silent evening, when the past just managed
to overlap the future, if only by a trace,
and the light doubles and casts
through the dark a sparkling that heavens the earth.
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
41 people are currently reading
618 people want to read
About the author
Galway Kinnell
119 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 - 30 of 43 reviews
September 14, 2015
I hack
a ravine in his thigh, and eat and drink,
and tear him down his whole length
and open him and climb in
and close him up after me, against the wind,
and sleep
from 'The Bear' (Body Rags 1968)
A New Selected Poems is a retrospective collection that encompasses Kinnell's work from 1960-1994. It is rich with moments huge and surreal, such as The Bear, as well as those tender and small, (Oatmeal) and all are connected to a deep sense of place and of mortality.
He used to tell me,
"What good is the day?
On some hill of despair
the bonfire
you kindle can light the great sky—
though it's true, of curse, to make it burn
you have to throw yourself in . . . "
from 'Another Night in the Ruins" (Body Rags 1968)
There is tremendous melancholy in his work, a sense of impending loss
If one day it happens
you find yourself with someone you love
in a café at one end
of the Pont Mirabeau, at the zinc bar
here wine finds its shapes in upward opening glasses,
and if you commit then, as we did, the error
of thinking
one day this will only be memory
from 'Little Sleep's-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight' (The Book of Nightmares 1971)
and so often, nature, the natural world, becomes his entry point to themes of birth and death:
The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
from 'Saint Francis and the Sow' (Mortal Acts, Mortal Words 1980)
I adore his playfulness with language, discovering in his work the delights of words like skirled, whucking, broughamed. His cadence is solid, his stanzas assured, even forceful.
Looking at your face
now that you have become ready to die
us like kneeling at an old gravestone
on an afternoon without sun, trying to read
the white chiselings of the poem
in the white stone.
from 'Looking at Your Face (Mortal Acts, Mortal Words 1980)
And, as my mother-in-law lay dying, right this very moment, in a hospice bed, I read The Last Hiding Places of Snow and I weep for her, weep in relief and terror, knowing that Death comes for us all.
I gasped with recognition and deep soul-pleasure at The Oregon Coast, a poem written in memoriam for one of my favorite poets, Richard Hugo. It tells of a time they spent together, the last time they spent together before Hugo's death
The last time I was on the coast Richard Hugo and I had dinner together
north of here, in a restaurant over the sea.
(The Past 1985)
Galway Kinnell died in 2014 at the age of 87. What he gave to the causes of social justice, civil rights, literature and humanity continues to reverberate in his compassionate, vital poems.
a ravine in his thigh, and eat and drink,
and tear him down his whole length
and open him and climb in
and close him up after me, against the wind,
and sleep
from 'The Bear' (Body Rags 1968)
A New Selected Poems is a retrospective collection that encompasses Kinnell's work from 1960-1994. It is rich with moments huge and surreal, such as The Bear, as well as those tender and small, (Oatmeal) and all are connected to a deep sense of place and of mortality.
He used to tell me,
"What good is the day?
On some hill of despair
the bonfire
you kindle can light the great sky—
though it's true, of curse, to make it burn
you have to throw yourself in . . . "
from 'Another Night in the Ruins" (Body Rags 1968)
There is tremendous melancholy in his work, a sense of impending loss
If one day it happens
you find yourself with someone you love
in a café at one end
of the Pont Mirabeau, at the zinc bar
here wine finds its shapes in upward opening glasses,
and if you commit then, as we did, the error
of thinking
one day this will only be memory
from 'Little Sleep's-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight' (The Book of Nightmares 1971)
and so often, nature, the natural world, becomes his entry point to themes of birth and death:
The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
from 'Saint Francis and the Sow' (Mortal Acts, Mortal Words 1980)
I adore his playfulness with language, discovering in his work the delights of words like skirled, whucking, broughamed. His cadence is solid, his stanzas assured, even forceful.
Looking at your face
now that you have become ready to die
us like kneeling at an old gravestone
on an afternoon without sun, trying to read
the white chiselings of the poem
in the white stone.
from 'Looking at Your Face (Mortal Acts, Mortal Words 1980)
And, as my mother-in-law lay dying, right this very moment, in a hospice bed, I read The Last Hiding Places of Snow and I weep for her, weep in relief and terror, knowing that Death comes for us all.
I gasped with recognition and deep soul-pleasure at The Oregon Coast, a poem written in memoriam for one of my favorite poets, Richard Hugo. It tells of a time they spent together, the last time they spent together before Hugo's death
The last time I was on the coast Richard Hugo and I had dinner together
north of here, in a restaurant over the sea.
(The Past 1985)
Galway Kinnell died in 2014 at the age of 87. What he gave to the causes of social justice, civil rights, literature and humanity continues to reverberate in his compassionate, vital poems.
June 22, 2019
These are the poems of 50 years. They hum with Kinnell's large themes of a lifetime's work: friendship, family, myth, love and sexuality, and that delicate union of the natural world with the one in which we live and are constantly refining. Kinnell is one of the most interesting poets I know writing today. He's lyrical and moving at the same time, at home everywhere. To read a Galway Kinnell poem is to have a warm conversation with someone who delights in speaking to you. It's like being in select company. His poetry is such a pleasure because it reads like privilege.
Rereading in 2019 in search of connections with Denise Levertov.
Rereading in 2019 in search of connections with Denise Levertov.
Want to read
September 20, 2008When I met Mr. Kinnell accidentally and enjoyed lunch with him and several of his fans, he gave me the gift of a poet's compliment by saying, "I enjoyed the vividness of your presence."
July 9, 2009
I had to read this for a class that I'm taking, and goodness knows that I am not a poetry person. I will admit that I did like many of the poems in the book though. A couple in particular: "Oatmeal", "The Olive Wood Fire", "Prayer", and "After Making Love We Hear Footsteps". But...there were some poems that I simply felt my jaw drop. Yes, perhaps I am a bit squeemish about some things, but sentences like, "He is still inside her. His big tow sticks into the pot of strawberry jam." Really? Is that necessary?
July 25, 2015
I've been wanting to read a book of Galway Kinnell's poetry for many years, spurred by what I've read of his in anthologies. One of my favorite poems of his is "Saint Francis and the Sow," which is in this volume and can be read online here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/....
This particular book proved to be half fascinating and half disappointing, those two impressions tied directly to time. In the first 108 pages, I marked 14 poems as of particular interest. This encompassed his work up through the 1980 publication of Mortal Acts, Mortal Words. In the remaining 66 pages, selections from three more books, up through 1994, I marked only three. And even those were much less intense than his earlier work.
What happened? I can only speculate. He seems to have gone through a divorce. Maybe it was that. Maybe he succumbed to subtle pressures to write poems that are more easily anthologized. I say that because his poems become noticeably shorter over time. Yet, ironically, probably his most anthologized poems is his early "The Bear," which is typical of his early style in that it is a meditation in 7 parts with a strongly mythic, visceral feel to it. "St. Francis and the Sow" is much more manageable by comparison. However, that latter poem still packs a lot of punch (at least for me), the work that comes after Mortal Acts, Mortal Words is less intense, seems to have lost a drive toward insight.
Regardless of what I perceive as a considerable decline in his poetry after 1980, I would still give his most recent book, Strong is Your Hold a try. His early themes were very entangled with death and the violence required to sustain us from a New England farming perspective. It makes me curious about how he faced his own approaching death. He died last year at the age of 87.
Here is an excerpt from an early section of "The Last Hiding Places of Snow":
Only the struggle for breath
remained: groans made
of all the goodbyes ever spoken
all turned meaningless; surplus world sucked back
into a body laboring to live
as far as it could into death; and past it, if it must.
There is a place in the woods
where one can hear
such sounds: sighs, groans
seeming to come
from the purplish murk of spruce boughs,
from the glimmer-at-night of white birches,
from the last hiding places of snow,
wind,
that's all, driven
across obstructions: every stump
speaks,
the spruce needles play out of it
the sorrows cried into it somewhere else.
This particular book proved to be half fascinating and half disappointing, those two impressions tied directly to time. In the first 108 pages, I marked 14 poems as of particular interest. This encompassed his work up through the 1980 publication of Mortal Acts, Mortal Words. In the remaining 66 pages, selections from three more books, up through 1994, I marked only three. And even those were much less intense than his earlier work.
What happened? I can only speculate. He seems to have gone through a divorce. Maybe it was that. Maybe he succumbed to subtle pressures to write poems that are more easily anthologized. I say that because his poems become noticeably shorter over time. Yet, ironically, probably his most anthologized poems is his early "The Bear," which is typical of his early style in that it is a meditation in 7 parts with a strongly mythic, visceral feel to it. "St. Francis and the Sow" is much more manageable by comparison. However, that latter poem still packs a lot of punch (at least for me), the work that comes after Mortal Acts, Mortal Words is less intense, seems to have lost a drive toward insight.
Regardless of what I perceive as a considerable decline in his poetry after 1980, I would still give his most recent book, Strong is Your Hold a try. His early themes were very entangled with death and the violence required to sustain us from a New England farming perspective. It makes me curious about how he faced his own approaching death. He died last year at the age of 87.
Here is an excerpt from an early section of "The Last Hiding Places of Snow":
Only the struggle for breath
remained: groans made
of all the goodbyes ever spoken
all turned meaningless; surplus world sucked back
into a body laboring to live
as far as it could into death; and past it, if it must.
There is a place in the woods
where one can hear
such sounds: sighs, groans
seeming to come
from the purplish murk of spruce boughs,
from the glimmer-at-night of white birches,
from the last hiding places of snow,
wind,
that's all, driven
across obstructions: every stump
speaks,
the spruce needles play out of it
the sorrows cried into it somewhere else.
January 12, 2008
Kinnell is a crusty, compassionate, welcoming poet. It is intriguing to read a very early poem, “For William Carlos Williams,” where he reports on a reading by Williams: “…the lovers of literature / Paid you the tribute of their almost total / Inattention…” He goes on: “…You seemed / Above remarking we were not your friends.” And, “In an hour / Of talking your honesty built you a tower.” At the recent memorial for his late friend Stanley Kunitz, Kinnell was the last speaker/reader of the night. He got up and did a quick dismissal of the idea of sharing lots of personal memories of his old friend, a blunt but subtle skewering of the young poet who had preceded him to the podium, and instead read three of Stanley’s poems that meant a lot to him. He read them strongly and with understated passion, a fine tribute in the end to both Kunitz and himself—its own tower of honesty. Kinnell has a directness about him, whether he’s writing from an urban perspective (“The Avenue Bearing the Initial of Christ into the New World,” where Whitman, Hart Crane, and Ginsberg all get channeled), a rural perspective (“The Porcupine” or “The Bear,” the former, we are told wittily, “In character / he resembles us in seven ways: / he puts his mark on outhouses, / he alchemizes by moonlight, / he shits on the run, / he uses his tail for climbing, / he chuckles softly to himself when scared, / he’s overcrowded if there’s more than one of him per five acres, / his eyes have their own inner redness.”), a personal perspective (“After Making Love We Hear Footsteps,” an account of a son who can sleep through most loud noises but seems to wake at “heavy breathing / or a stifled come-cry anywhere in the house,” a gentle poem that concludes: “this one whom habit of memory propels to the ground of his making, / sleeper only the mortal sounds can sing awake, / this blessing love gives again into our arms.”), or even abstract perspective (“Prayer,” in its entirety: “Whatever happens. Whatever / what is is is what / I want. Only that. But that.”), he manages grace, significance, and challenge in lines taut or relaxed, vocabulary simple or baroquely appropriate, details that are mundane and extraordinary.
February 21, 2017
a trip through modernist boredom, again someone mistakes being able to write with being able to write poems
July 16, 2020
There was only one poem in this collection that I really fell in love with, but that one would have been worth slogging through a book four times as long.
"Oatmeal"
I eat oatmeal for breakfast.
I make it on the hot plate and put skimmed milk on it.
I eat it alone.
I am aware it is not good to eat oatmeal alone.
Its consistency is such that it is better for your mental health
if somebody eats it with you.
That is why I often think up an imaginary companion to have breakfast with.
Possibly it is even worse to eat oatmeal with an imaginary companion.
Nevertheless, yesterday morning, I ate my oatmeal porridge,
as he called it with John Keats.
Keats said I was absolutely right to invite him:
due to its glutinous texture, gluey lumpishness, hint of slime,
and unusual willingness to disintegrate, oatmeal should not be eaten alone.
He said that in his opinion, however, it is perfectly OK to eat
it with an imaginary companion, and that he himself had
enjoyed memorable porridges with Edmund Spenser and John Milton.
Even if eating oatmeal with an imaginary companion is not as
wholesome as Keats claims, still, you can learn something from it.
Yesterday morning, for instance, Keats told me about writing the “Ode to a Nightingale.”
He had a heck of a time finishing it those were his words “Oi ‘ad a ‘eck of a toime,” he said,
more or less, speaking through his porridge.
He wrote it quickly, on scraps of paper, which he then stuck in his pocket,
but when he got home he couldn’t figure out the order of the stanzas,
and he and a friend spread the papers on a table, and they
made some sense of them, but he isn’t sure to this day if they got it right.
An entire stanza may have slipped into the lining of his jacket through a hole in his pocket.
He still wonders about the occasional sense of drift between stanzas,
and the way here and there a line will go into the
configuration of a Moslem at prayer, then raise itself up
and peer about, and then lay itself down slightly off the mark,
causing the poem to move forward with a reckless, shining wobble.
He said someone told him that later in life Wordsworth heard about
the scraps of paper on the table, and tried shuffling some
stanzas of his own, but only made matters worse.
I would not have known any of this but for my reluctance to eat oatmeal alone.
When breakfast was over, John recited “To Autumn.”
He recited it slowly, with much feeling, and he articulated the words
lovingly, and his odd accent sounded sweet.
He didn’t offer the story of writing “To Autumn,” I doubt if there is much of one.
But he did say the sight of a just-harvested oat field got him started
on it, and two of the lines, “For Summer has o’er-brimmed their
clammy cells” and “Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours,”
came to him while eating oatmeal alone.
I can see him drawing a spoon through the stuff, gazing into the glimmering furrows,
muttering. Maybe there is no sublime; only the shining of the amnion’s tatters.
For supper tonight I am going to have a baked potato left over from lunch.
I am aware that a leftover baked potato is damp, slippery, and simultaneously
gummy and crumbly, and therefore I’m going to invite Patrick Kavanagh to join me.
"Oatmeal"
I eat oatmeal for breakfast.
I make it on the hot plate and put skimmed milk on it.
I eat it alone.
I am aware it is not good to eat oatmeal alone.
Its consistency is such that it is better for your mental health
if somebody eats it with you.
That is why I often think up an imaginary companion to have breakfast with.
Possibly it is even worse to eat oatmeal with an imaginary companion.
Nevertheless, yesterday morning, I ate my oatmeal porridge,
as he called it with John Keats.
Keats said I was absolutely right to invite him:
due to its glutinous texture, gluey lumpishness, hint of slime,
and unusual willingness to disintegrate, oatmeal should not be eaten alone.
He said that in his opinion, however, it is perfectly OK to eat
it with an imaginary companion, and that he himself had
enjoyed memorable porridges with Edmund Spenser and John Milton.
Even if eating oatmeal with an imaginary companion is not as
wholesome as Keats claims, still, you can learn something from it.
Yesterday morning, for instance, Keats told me about writing the “Ode to a Nightingale.”
He had a heck of a time finishing it those were his words “Oi ‘ad a ‘eck of a toime,” he said,
more or less, speaking through his porridge.
He wrote it quickly, on scraps of paper, which he then stuck in his pocket,
but when he got home he couldn’t figure out the order of the stanzas,
and he and a friend spread the papers on a table, and they
made some sense of them, but he isn’t sure to this day if they got it right.
An entire stanza may have slipped into the lining of his jacket through a hole in his pocket.
He still wonders about the occasional sense of drift between stanzas,
and the way here and there a line will go into the
configuration of a Moslem at prayer, then raise itself up
and peer about, and then lay itself down slightly off the mark,
causing the poem to move forward with a reckless, shining wobble.
He said someone told him that later in life Wordsworth heard about
the scraps of paper on the table, and tried shuffling some
stanzas of his own, but only made matters worse.
I would not have known any of this but for my reluctance to eat oatmeal alone.
When breakfast was over, John recited “To Autumn.”
He recited it slowly, with much feeling, and he articulated the words
lovingly, and his odd accent sounded sweet.
He didn’t offer the story of writing “To Autumn,” I doubt if there is much of one.
But he did say the sight of a just-harvested oat field got him started
on it, and two of the lines, “For Summer has o’er-brimmed their
clammy cells” and “Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours,”
came to him while eating oatmeal alone.
I can see him drawing a spoon through the stuff, gazing into the glimmering furrows,
muttering. Maybe there is no sublime; only the shining of the amnion’s tatters.
For supper tonight I am going to have a baked potato left over from lunch.
I am aware that a leftover baked potato is damp, slippery, and simultaneously
gummy and crumbly, and therefore I’m going to invite Patrick Kavanagh to join me.
August 31, 2025
Daug augalijos. Netrūksta retai į poeziją pakviečiamų gyvūnų: dygliakiaulės, paršavedės kiaulės, rupūžės, gyvatės, jūrų žvaigždės... Nemažai erozijos, irimo, žlugsmo. Yra gana drastiškų (bet - nuostabių) palyginimų bei metaforų. Štai potvynio sunešto purvo ir žvaigždėto dangaus analogija:
"On the tidal mud, just before sunset,
dozens of starfishes
were creeping. It was
as though the mud were a sky /.../".
O čia - apie vaginą:
"He kneels, opens
the dark, vertical smile
linking heaven with the underearth /.../".
Gyvenimas sunkus, pavojingas, ne itin linksmas, su gera doze kančios. Bet jį reikia ištverti:
"Wait.
Don't go too early.
You're tired. But everyone's tired.
But no one is tired enough."
Kas padeda ištverti? Gerumas, meilė, bičiulystė:
"/.../ though sometimes it is necesarry
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow /.../".
K. nesiūlo atsiskirti nuo pasaulio. Atvirkščiai - ragina grįžti ir gyventi tarp savosios rūšies:
"When one has lived a long time alone,
one wants to live again among men and women /.../".
Didelę knygos dalį sudaro ilgi, susidedantys iš penkių - dešimties dalių, eilėraščiai. Bet yra ir trumpučių. Kai kurie iš jų - nuostabūs:
"Looking at your face
now you have become ready to die
is like kneeling at an old gravestone
on an afternoon without sun, trying to read
the white chiselings of the poem
in the white stone."
"On the tidal mud, just before sunset,
dozens of starfishes
were creeping. It was
as though the mud were a sky /.../".
O čia - apie vaginą:
"He kneels, opens
the dark, vertical smile
linking heaven with the underearth /.../".
Gyvenimas sunkus, pavojingas, ne itin linksmas, su gera doze kančios. Bet jį reikia ištverti:
"Wait.
Don't go too early.
You're tired. But everyone's tired.
But no one is tired enough."
Kas padeda ištverti? Gerumas, meilė, bičiulystė:
"/.../ though sometimes it is necesarry
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow /.../".
K. nesiūlo atsiskirti nuo pasaulio. Atvirkščiai - ragina grįžti ir gyventi tarp savosios rūšies:
"When one has lived a long time alone,
one wants to live again among men and women /.../".
Didelę knygos dalį sudaro ilgi, susidedantys iš penkių - dešimties dalių, eilėraščiai. Bet yra ir trumpučių. Kai kurie iš jų - nuostabūs:
"Looking at your face
now you have become ready to die
is like kneeling at an old gravestone
on an afternoon without sun, trying to read
the white chiselings of the poem
in the white stone."
April 20, 2022
Rating: 3. I read this aloud with my girlfriend. She told me to give it 2, I said I’d probably be nice and give it a 4. Here we are in the middle.
We liked a handful of poems in this book (like the one we eventually got to on the back cover- probably the best out of them all in our opinions). We were just really uncomfortable or had to laugh at a bunch of them because they didn’t seem very self aware at all. If I believed a word out of Freud’s mouth I would say to look at some of the poems in this book through the lens of a possible case of Oedipus complex. Odd read, but we got it for free through a used book giveaway. Made for a funny past time psychoanalyzing the author for writing about comparing every woman’s breasts to his mother’s. The best poems seem to be the ones about his child(ren), which are such a wild tone shift to come after all of the I-just-gutted-10-animals-and-drank-my-mothers-milk-at-much-too-old-an-age-edness of this collection of poems.
We liked a handful of poems in this book (like the one we eventually got to on the back cover- probably the best out of them all in our opinions). We were just really uncomfortable or had to laugh at a bunch of them because they didn’t seem very self aware at all. If I believed a word out of Freud’s mouth I would say to look at some of the poems in this book through the lens of a possible case of Oedipus complex. Odd read, but we got it for free through a used book giveaway. Made for a funny past time psychoanalyzing the author for writing about comparing every woman’s breasts to his mother’s. The best poems seem to be the ones about his child(ren), which are such a wild tone shift to come after all of the I-just-gutted-10-animals-and-drank-my-mothers-milk-at-much-too-old-an-age-edness of this collection of poems.
November 24, 2017
Tender, wry collection of poems.
September 15, 2019
There is so much to admire in this collection. "The Bear" is one of my favorites, but there are so many poems worth lingering over.
April 25, 2020
Great poetry.
December 1, 2021
Not really my type of poetry, but well crafted.
February 25, 2023
A fine collection.
Read
December 11, 2024Abandoned page 30 ish. Just didn’t grab me, great writing though
January 12, 2025
A gorgeous collection.
March 10, 2010
What a wonderful poet--favorites of mine from this book are too many to include but here's a few:
St. Francis and the Sow
The Perch
The Room
When One Has Lived a Long time Alone
After Making Love we Hear Footsteps
THe Last Hiding Places of Snow
The Waking
That Silent Evening
The Deconstruction of Emily Dickinson
Rapture
The Road Between Here and There
The Man in the Chair
My Mother's R and R
Neverland
Enjoy! Kinnell has such a way with metaphors--nature and human relationships all bound up together in a very down to earth world.
Here's St. Francis and the Sow:
St. Francis and the Sow
The bud
Stands for all things
Even those things that don’t flower
For everything flowers from within of self blessing
Though sometimes it is necessary
To reteach a thing it’s loveliness
To put a hand
On the brow
Of the flower
And retell it in words and in touch
It is lovely
Until it flowers again from within of selfblessing
As Saint Francis
Put his hand on the creased forehead of the sow
And told her in words and in touch
All blessings of the earth on the sow, and the sow
Began remembering all down her thick length,
From the earthen snout, all the way
Through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail
From the hard spininess of the spiked out spine
Down through the great broken heart
To the blue dreaminess spurting and shuddering
From the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths
Sucking and blowing beneath them
The long perfect loveliness of sow.
Galway Kinnell
St. Francis and the Sow
The Perch
The Room
When One Has Lived a Long time Alone
After Making Love we Hear Footsteps
THe Last Hiding Places of Snow
The Waking
That Silent Evening
The Deconstruction of Emily Dickinson
Rapture
The Road Between Here and There
The Man in the Chair
My Mother's R and R
Neverland
Enjoy! Kinnell has such a way with metaphors--nature and human relationships all bound up together in a very down to earth world.
Here's St. Francis and the Sow:
St. Francis and the Sow
The bud
Stands for all things
Even those things that don’t flower
For everything flowers from within of self blessing
Though sometimes it is necessary
To reteach a thing it’s loveliness
To put a hand
On the brow
Of the flower
And retell it in words and in touch
It is lovely
Until it flowers again from within of selfblessing
As Saint Francis
Put his hand on the creased forehead of the sow
And told her in words and in touch
All blessings of the earth on the sow, and the sow
Began remembering all down her thick length,
From the earthen snout, all the way
Through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail
From the hard spininess of the spiked out spine
Down through the great broken heart
To the blue dreaminess spurting and shuddering
From the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths
Sucking and blowing beneath them
The long perfect loveliness of sow.
Galway Kinnell
February 21, 2015
I remember as well as one can after 43 years when Galway Kinnell gave a poetry reading at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. I was stunned, not just by his reading, but more by the poetry. I went immediately to the Centicore Bookstore and bought what they had available at the time, I think Body Rags.
This collection affirms in my mind that he wrote some of the finest verse during the last half of the 20th Century. In "The Bear" he reveals the unity of all being even as he vividly and grimly describes the awfulness of the way of tracking and killing a bear from the inside out.
In "Little Sleep's-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight" he bares the tender love of a father who sees hope and mortality in the growth of a child.
He writes passionate love poems that feel the bones beneath his lover's face. He weaves himself into nature and nature into his flesh. And his language is real, unadorned eloquence:
"In the human heart
There sleeps a green worm
That has spun the heart about itself,
And that shall dream itself black wings
One day to break free into the black sky."
or again::
"In the forest I discover a flower.
The invisible life of the thing
Goes up in flames that are invisible,
Like cellophane burning in the sunlight.
It burns up. Its drift is to be nothing."
If you only read one collection by Kinnell, this is a great one. But I guarantee it will leave you want to read more.
This collection affirms in my mind that he wrote some of the finest verse during the last half of the 20th Century. In "The Bear" he reveals the unity of all being even as he vividly and grimly describes the awfulness of the way of tracking and killing a bear from the inside out.
In "Little Sleep's-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight" he bares the tender love of a father who sees hope and mortality in the growth of a child.
He writes passionate love poems that feel the bones beneath his lover's face. He weaves himself into nature and nature into his flesh. And his language is real, unadorned eloquence:
"In the human heart
There sleeps a green worm
That has spun the heart about itself,
And that shall dream itself black wings
One day to break free into the black sky."
or again::
"In the forest I discover a flower.
The invisible life of the thing
Goes up in flames that are invisible,
Like cellophane burning in the sunlight.
It burns up. Its drift is to be nothing."
If you only read one collection by Kinnell, this is a great one. But I guarantee it will leave you want to read more.
July 12, 2009
a life in free verse
I've been savoring this book at the rate of a poem per month since my daughter gave it to me. (Don't ask how many bookmarks are propped up beside my bed.)
Gallway Kinnell's anthology is a tour de force of free verse. Kinnell speaks in an unstilted, vernacular voice that requires no academic dissection. The poems are rife with sensory description and rich with apt and original metaphor. Each poem stands alone as a satisfying emotional experience and as a unique insight into the the poet's life.
In the chronological progression of the anthology, the poems become more personal, more powerful, and more varied. It is as if the poet, having accepted the bridle of his muse, is driven year by year at an accelerating pace of insight and passion. Galway Kinnell proves that man can outrun his banshee.
I've been savoring this book at the rate of a poem per month since my daughter gave it to me. (Don't ask how many bookmarks are propped up beside my bed.)
Gallway Kinnell's anthology is a tour de force of free verse. Kinnell speaks in an unstilted, vernacular voice that requires no academic dissection. The poems are rife with sensory description and rich with apt and original metaphor. Each poem stands alone as a satisfying emotional experience and as a unique insight into the the poet's life.
In the chronological progression of the anthology, the poems become more personal, more powerful, and more varied. It is as if the poet, having accepted the bridle of his muse, is driven year by year at an accelerating pace of insight and passion. Galway Kinnell proves that man can outrun his banshee.
May 9, 2013
I enjoy the second half of this collection so much so that my neutrality concerning the first half seems unimportant. He got better with time, is what I'm saying. Favorites include:
"Little Sleep's-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight" [I'm never not moved by the line 'forever in the pre-trembling of a house that falls.']
"Wait"
"The Last Hiding Place of Snow" [incredibly gorgeous and tender]
"The Road Between Here and There"
"Prayer"
"When One Has Lived a Long Time Alone"
"Sheffield Ghazal 4 +5"
"Neverland"
"Little Sleep's-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight" [I'm never not moved by the line 'forever in the pre-trembling of a house that falls.']
"Wait"
"The Last Hiding Place of Snow" [incredibly gorgeous and tender]
"The Road Between Here and There"
"Prayer"
"When One Has Lived a Long Time Alone"
"Sheffield Ghazal 4 +5"
"Neverland"
November 5, 2007
I would really like to re-read Galway Kinnell with a friend who is more knowledgeable about the Bible, because his work is full of allusions that I don't understand well.
I read a few of these poems after hiking up to Romero Pools in Catalina State Park with friends this fall, and the setting definitely added to my sense of awe.
I read a few of these poems after hiking up to Romero Pools in Catalina State Park with friends this fall, and the setting definitely added to my sense of awe.
October 30, 2008
His earlier works, from _What a Kingdom It Was_ and _Flower Herding on Mount Monadnock_, are so much more powerful and graceful than his latter collections of poetry. Overall, a good sample of Kinnell's work as it includes several poems which display his beautiful language and stunning inquiries.
July 28, 2008
I saw him read this past April and fell in love with Galway all over again. The man is 83 and still sharp, still hilarious. He is a dude's dude who's not afraid to write about real emotions and the banal miracles of everyday life. Go figure!
December 5, 2008
It is hard to say that I have finished a book of poetry. Let's just say I have returned the book to the library. The poems that I read were wonderful. I will check the book out again sometime - maybe even soon.
Read
July 9, 2010The collection is a great book displaying the many dimensions of Kinnell. It contains excerpts from The Book of Nightmares, also including poems from the Vermont Poems. The poems in this book are often revisions of previous work, which in terms of craft is very helpful to see.
October 21, 2013
Just having "The Avenue Bearing The Initial of Christ Into The New World" in this volume is enough reason to snap it up if you're lucky enough to find it. It's become my favorite volume in my poetry collection and I'm savoring it poem by poem. Kinnell's work is a real treasure.
February 9, 2014
I keep coming back to "Saint Francis and the Sow," the kind of revelation that gives life to an earthy, muddy poetics. Kinnell can be a little too muddy for my taste, but when he focuses in--on the "long, perfect loveliness of sow,' for example--he astounds.
October 18, 2015
Selections from previous published works, called "A New Selected Poems" because there is already a volume called "New Selected Poems." Accessible, easily relatable poetry about love, life, and everyday things.
April 21, 2007
One of my all-time favorite poets.
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