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The Book Of Nightmares: A Landmark Visionary Poem in Ten Parts and American Poetry Masterpiece
Galway Kinnell's poetry has always been marked by richness of language, devotion to the things and creatures of the world, and an effort to transform every understanding into the universality of art.
88 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1971
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3158 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 155 reviews
March 11, 2011
1
This book
is at least
a week
overdue
having sat on a table in front of the television
after one failed attempt (by me) to
read it
but it just looks so
Badass
with the arcane symbols
and worn typography
and shit
so I saved it to try again, swearing
I will get through you.
2
My friends are often
frustrated
by my continued
insistence
that I don't understand
poetry
and
despite
the fact that I am starting to think
that sometimes I do
in fact
get something out of it
then books like
this
come along
leaving me thinking
can you really get away with the phrase
unicorn phallus
and still call it poetry?
or
moreover
how can you use the phrase
unicorn phallus
incorrectly?
that is,
if you're going to use it, man
maybe don't talk about it
in the middle of a stanza
about watching
your wife
sleeping
because that's just sort of weird
and not the cool
kind
of
weird
but
like
just the kind of weird where looking at your wife
makes you think of
horses
3
Essentially
for the
uninitiated
this is one poem
in
ten
mostly
unrelated
parts
each of which is subdivided
into
6 or so
unrelated sections
meaning
this is a book
of 60 or so
poem-y things
meaning
you know
it's mostly a regular book of poetry
with
granted
a fucking cool name.
there are lots of stanzas
about
watching his
newborn sleep
and his
wife sleep
and some cool parts
about bears
and rain
and fire
and i gotta say
i like the bears
and the
rain
and
the fire.
but mostly
there's a lot
of being
fascinated
with the
idea of writing
a FUCKING LONG POEM
which
yknow
i understand
but maybe
talking about how your work is epic
inside of your Epic Work
sort of dilutes
the
grandness?
and maybe
if you have a book of one poem
which is really
c'mon
ten poems
and the first one
talks a lot
about being first
and the last one
well
you get it
and the middle ones
are full of like
people sleeping
and random asides
that don't totally
carry a theme
and then
one
unicorn phallus
i dunno
maybe
you shouldn't call your book
The Book Of Fucking Nightmares
and maybe
not such
a cool cover?
cuz srsly
if you just called it
A Book Where People Sleep And There Are Some Bears
I would still
read that book
but
i
wouldn't
be so annoyed with you
when I hit
the
unicorn phallus
just because
you write
a lot of phrases
with
a lot
of line breaks
it's not
always
poetry
(case in point)
and just because you can write
weird
it don't always mean
you can write
good
although
I know
you can
cuz srsly
the bits with the bears
and rains and fires
more of that
cuz that
I might find myself
returning to
before I let this slide
into the drop-box
at
the library.
This book
is at least
a week
overdue
having sat on a table in front of the television
after one failed attempt (by me) to
read it
but it just looks so
Badass
with the arcane symbols
and worn typography
and shit
so I saved it to try again, swearing
I will get through you.
2
My friends are often
frustrated
by my continued
insistence
that I don't understand
poetry
and
despite
the fact that I am starting to think
that sometimes I do
in fact
get something out of it
then books like
this
come along
leaving me thinking
can you really get away with the phrase
unicorn phallus
and still call it poetry?
or
moreover
how can you use the phrase
unicorn phallus
incorrectly?
that is,
if you're going to use it, man
maybe don't talk about it
in the middle of a stanza
about watching
your wife
sleeping
because that's just sort of weird
and not the cool
kind
of
weird
but
like
just the kind of weird where looking at your wife
makes you think of
horses
3
Essentially
for the
uninitiated
this is one poem
in
ten
mostly
unrelated
parts
each of which is subdivided
into
6 or so
unrelated sections
meaning
this is a book
of 60 or so
poem-y things
meaning
you know
it's mostly a regular book of poetry
with
granted
a fucking cool name.
there are lots of stanzas
about
watching his
newborn sleep
and his
wife sleep
and some cool parts
about bears
and rain
and fire
and i gotta say
i like the bears
and the
rain
and
the fire.
but mostly
there's a lot
of being
fascinated
with the
idea of writing
a FUCKING LONG POEM
which
yknow
i understand
but maybe
talking about how your work is epic
inside of your Epic Work
sort of dilutes
the
grandness?
and maybe
if you have a book of one poem
which is really
c'mon
ten poems
and the first one
talks a lot
about being first
and the last one
well
you get it
and the middle ones
are full of like
people sleeping
and random asides
that don't totally
carry a theme
and then
one
unicorn phallus
i dunno
maybe
you shouldn't call your book
The Book Of Fucking Nightmares
and maybe
not such
a cool cover?
cuz srsly
if you just called it
A Book Where People Sleep And There Are Some Bears
I would still
read that book
but
i
wouldn't
be so annoyed with you
when I hit
the
unicorn phallus
just because
you write
a lot of phrases
with
a lot
of line breaks
it's not
always
poetry
(case in point)
and just because you can write
weird
it don't always mean
you can write
good
although
I know
you can
cuz srsly
the bits with the bears
and rains and fires
more of that
cuz that
I might find myself
returning to
before I let this slide
into the drop-box
at
the library.
March 11, 2008
In this ambitious work, Galway Kinnell creates a narrator who, in the face of becoming a parent, confronts the nightmares of his culture and his personal history in order to make sense of life and its inevitable “road” to death (73). On this journey, the speaker addresses the timely subject of the Vietnam War (sections V and VI), blaming the “Christian Man” (42) for perpetuating the deceit and power dynamic that have caused so many nightmares on this planet. But, it is in the sections where Kinnell explores the dark side to romance and human connection where his language and images really shine. It is here that he hypothesizes how we are drawn together by our fears, our “wandering” through life and “losing our way” (21). In this state, he asserts that the only way to find a mate is to “Let our scars fall in love” (31). This amazing line is just one of many examples in this text of poignant statements on modern love, modern war and what it is to be human.
However, it is a difficult text to discern meaning from, partly because of the jarring free verse that Kinnell uses throughout the book. It seems each line was constructed as an individual unit of meaning, creating such varied line lengths that the reader is given only a map of images with which to navigate this narrator’s consciousness. In many ways, it does mimic a dream, in that the disjointed and sometimes illogical connections are just left that way, giving the reader the difficult task of interpreting them. It’s a great example of form and content coexisting, but one that makes it a bit frustrating as a reader. Additionally, many lines are broken so that an article, such as “the”, hangs at the end of a line. This is always awkward looking to me and trips my eye, and not always to good purpose in this book.
Overall, I am glad to be introduced to this writer, as he is obviously an important contemporary poet, and I would be interested to check out some of his other books to see how his style has evolved since this bold work.
However, it is a difficult text to discern meaning from, partly because of the jarring free verse that Kinnell uses throughout the book. It seems each line was constructed as an individual unit of meaning, creating such varied line lengths that the reader is given only a map of images with which to navigate this narrator’s consciousness. In many ways, it does mimic a dream, in that the disjointed and sometimes illogical connections are just left that way, giving the reader the difficult task of interpreting them. It’s a great example of form and content coexisting, but one that makes it a bit frustrating as a reader. Additionally, many lines are broken so that an article, such as “the”, hangs at the end of a line. This is always awkward looking to me and trips my eye, and not always to good purpose in this book.
Overall, I am glad to be introduced to this writer, as he is obviously an important contemporary poet, and I would be interested to check out some of his other books to see how his style has evolved since this bold work.
March 9, 2021
This is the last time I let myself be suckered by a righteous woodcut on the cover, because the only righteous thing about this book was that it finally ended.
The only way Galway Kinnell could have tried any harder to be profound would have been to randomly pick words out of a dictionary, run them through a thesaurus program for their most obscure synonyms, and then arrange them in correct word order, making sure to line break for the hell of it once in a while. Meaning, or even attempt at coherent thought, are overrated anyway.
The good part?
I now know bear hunting is hardcore, the will has a peristalsis (for real!), the unicorn's phallus might be a solipsistic construction of the unicorn's pahllus, and, when in doubt, hens may be used as thematic links* between poems.
Word.
*C'mon, hen is a theme. And a dead hen is even more of a theme. Because it's dead. Which is, um, deep.
Go be a politician, Galway Kinnell. Your poetry stinks.
The only way Galway Kinnell could have tried any harder to be profound would have been to randomly pick words out of a dictionary, run them through a thesaurus program for their most obscure synonyms, and then arrange them in correct word order, making sure to line break for the hell of it once in a while. Meaning, or even attempt at coherent thought, are overrated anyway.
The good part?
I now know bear hunting is hardcore, the will has a peristalsis (for real!), the unicorn's phallus might be a solipsistic construction of the unicorn's pahllus, and, when in doubt, hens may be used as thematic links* between poems.
Word.
*C'mon, hen is a theme. And a dead hen is even more of a theme. Because it's dead. Which is, um, deep.
Go be a politician, Galway Kinnell. Your poetry stinks.
October 23, 2015
I thought I'd heard the old idea that love is what makes our short and moribund lives worth living in so many ways from so many places that surely it could never again have an impact. Then Galway Kinnel comes along and says it afresh, "The wages of dying is love." Knocked my socks off. And it was by no means the only line in here to do so. I had to pick my socks up from across the room about once a page.
February 27, 2025
A written incantation to transfigure death into something comprehensible and maybe even find life contained within it
Instructions: repeat until you understand how terrifying it is
Instructions: repeat until you understand how terrifying it is
September 3, 2008
Who can say how quickly the Dissembler weaves his will? Weeds creep in faster the finer the garden. Chance was that quickly tripping spider of soft fortunes and poisonous heart. Chance was that way things could have been. The loser fashions his yoke from genuflection. Of such a solid piece of plowshare is Galway Kinnel's epic rubric, The Book of Nightmares.
At the overture of contention, the Dissembler tapped his baton upon the aceldama of hope. As I read The Book of Nightmares, I heard and was ashamed to be caught sleeping, and I leapt up from our shared dream, running now fully awake to my undoing. But, nothing except my sudden fright told me when to run. There is no starting gun. Just an imaginary point, floating in the indefiniteness of the womb, the arbitrary closeness where two cells approach infinitely without meeting until they merely become one, fusing without spark or flash. In the maternal darkness, we supernova, as lightless as basalt, into a self... burgeoning in the black loam beneath the ancient tree there on the shore of the ancient sea, the Dissembler was there to witness all this, stamping the notary seal on the soft crown of our creation.
What Galway Kinnell's inspired text preposes is an alchemical formula for lifting the Dissembler's seal. This is black arts time, children, but we're too far from the Garden to fear the shadows any longer:
"And yet perhaps this is the reason you cry,
this the nightmare you wake screaming from:
being forever
in the pre-trembling of a house that falls."
At the overture of contention, the Dissembler tapped his baton upon the aceldama of hope. As I read The Book of Nightmares, I heard and was ashamed to be caught sleeping, and I leapt up from our shared dream, running now fully awake to my undoing. But, nothing except my sudden fright told me when to run. There is no starting gun. Just an imaginary point, floating in the indefiniteness of the womb, the arbitrary closeness where two cells approach infinitely without meeting until they merely become one, fusing without spark or flash. In the maternal darkness, we supernova, as lightless as basalt, into a self... burgeoning in the black loam beneath the ancient tree there on the shore of the ancient sea, the Dissembler was there to witness all this, stamping the notary seal on the soft crown of our creation.
What Galway Kinnell's inspired text preposes is an alchemical formula for lifting the Dissembler's seal. This is black arts time, children, but we're too far from the Garden to fear the shadows any longer:
"And yet perhaps this is the reason you cry,
this the nightmare you wake screaming from:
being forever
in the pre-trembling of a house that falls."
November 29, 2007
The only collection of poetry that has ever gripped me!
August 9, 2016
I freaking loved this.
August 29, 2018
Discussed this book here: https://youtu.be/iwzwN2nt_JY
July 12, 2021
i mean come on:
“these letters / across space I guess / will be all we will know of one another. / So little of what one is threads itself through the eye / of empty space. / Never mind. / The self is the least of it. Let our scars fall in love.”
“these letters / across space I guess / will be all we will know of one another. / So little of what one is threads itself through the eye / of empty space. / Never mind. / The self is the least of it. Let our scars fall in love.”
August 31, 2016
i think maybe reading these poems while back home in rhode island was cheating a little, because a) kinnell was born in providence and grew up in pawtucket, and b) i'm in the middle of some semi-existential family realizations, and the book is about kinnell's family and about how we live, in small moments, with the awareness that everything around us (including ourselves and the people we love most) is destined to leave. the poems feel wide-open and spacious, but also simultaneously raw and visceral, in a literal sense- the images are often ugly and unforgiving. one article i read described them as "unlovely."
anyway i realize that these reviews make it sound like i cry every time i read a book but listen, i cried over "under the maud moon" in public, in a coffee shop in providence, and i'm not sorry about it. i think i'm going to try body rags next.
anyway i realize that these reviews make it sound like i cry every time i read a book but listen, i cried over "under the maud moon" in public, in a coffee shop in providence, and i'm not sorry about it. i think i'm going to try body rags next.
August 9, 2007
A broken clock is right twice a day. That is how I explain to myself that I really like these poems. Usually I find Kinnell's poems to be overblown and melodramatic in a way that is unctious at best. These poems, however, really do what they set out to do, and a little melodrama fits the prospectus just right. Here, Kinnell takes risks, psychological and poetic, that I have not seen in the other books of his that I've picked up. In fact, this one is the only book of his that I would recommend, and I do.
October 11, 2013
why the FUCK is galway kinnell not poet laureate???? somoeone explaiN???
in all seriousness, if you've not read this yet, please go to your local library or the closest bookstore or, if you have to, even order it online. it's worth it. this is my favorite book in the world. it makes me want to throw up in the best possible way. it's disgusting. it's beautiful.
in all seriousness, if you've not read this yet, please go to your local library or the closest bookstore or, if you have to, even order it online. it's worth it. this is my favorite book in the world. it makes me want to throw up in the best possible way. it's disgusting. it's beautiful.
June 29, 2014
"The wages of dying is love..."
Galway Kinnell dedicated this book-long poem to his children, Maud and Fergus. The poems never fail to move me. Birth, death, love, and life's great mysteries. This is truly a Book of Nightmares but there is also sweetness and light--made all the sweeter because our lives and joys are so fleeting.
Galway Kinnell dedicated this book-long poem to his children, Maud and Fergus. The poems never fail to move me. Birth, death, love, and life's great mysteries. This is truly a Book of Nightmares but there is also sweetness and light--made all the sweeter because our lives and joys are so fleeting.
September 18, 2020
look, i don't know shit about poetry but wow this was gorgeous
January 15, 2023
2023, Book 4
Horrible. You make no sense! And when you do, you are prose and not poetry. Why do you have to be this way? Someone said you have words, randomly picked out of the dictionary. I agree. I think your God blindly put his hand into a jar of words and then let them drop into several funnels, each doing nothing because all the words just drop into the same bowl underneath.
There. That is how you were made.
I think I will read you again some day. Not because you were legible (Note how I do not say that you had a spark that has the potential to burn fiercely. Nope. No way.), nor because I think I will change my mind; but because I want to see how you made it here.
There is only one piece that I liked. You can find it below.
________________________________
Quote:
I ran
my neck broken I ran
holding my head up with both hands I ran
thinking the fumes the flames
may burn the oboe
but listen buddy boy they can't touch the notes!
Horrible. You make no sense! And when you do, you are prose and not poetry. Why do you have to be this way? Someone said you have words, randomly picked out of the dictionary. I agree. I think your God blindly put his hand into a jar of words and then let them drop into several funnels, each doing nothing because all the words just drop into the same bowl underneath.
There. That is how you were made.
I think I will read you again some day. Not because you were legible (Note how I do not say that you had a spark that has the potential to burn fiercely. Nope. No way.), nor because I think I will change my mind; but because I want to see how you made it here.
There is only one piece that I liked. You can find it below.
________________________________
Quote:
I ran
my neck broken I ran
holding my head up with both hands I ran
thinking the fumes the flames
may burn the oboe
but listen buddy boy they can't touch the notes!
October 15, 2023
Such wonderful madness and depth. This text, language and art that Galway displays sings, sleepwalks and opens to vivid nightmares.
Oh man, I love the smell of old books, especially when they hit me like this.
”I too, have eaten the meals of dark shore. In time’s own mattress, where a sag shaped as a body lies next to a sag—graves ……. or ground their nightmared teeth here….”
I cut up the stanzas a little but bits like this kept me reading on… and smelling the book for a third and fifth time. I will own a copy of this book soon.
Sections I’ll return to:
Under the Maud Moon
The Hen Flower
The Shoes of Wandering
Little Sleep’s-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight
Oh man, I love the smell of old books, especially when they hit me like this.
”I too, have eaten the meals of dark shore. In time’s own mattress, where a sag shaped as a body lies next to a sag—graves ……. or ground their nightmared teeth here….”
I cut up the stanzas a little but bits like this kept me reading on… and smelling the book for a third and fifth time. I will own a copy of this book soon.
Sections I’ll return to:
Under the Maud Moon
The Hen Flower
The Shoes of Wandering
Little Sleep’s-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight
February 22, 2022
“No matter, now, whom it was built for, it keeps its flames, it warms everyone who might wander into its radiance, a tree, a lost animal, the stones, because in the dying world it was set burning.”
Delightful read, though there are some weird race mentions I don’t know if they’re supposed to be read as a negative or a positive way, it was beautiful all things set aside.
October 11, 2024
A/A+
One of the finest books of poetry I’ve as yet encountered. Both nightmarish and heavenly all at once.
One of the finest books of poetry I’ve as yet encountered. Both nightmarish and heavenly all at once.
December 31, 2021
Haunting, stirring, lovely.
June 8, 2020
When it was cold
on our hillside, and you cried
in the crib rocking
through the darkness, on wood
knifed down to the curve of the smile, a sadness
stranger than ours, all of it
flowing from the other world,
I used to come to you
and sit by you
and sing to you.
”Under the Maud Moon”
Many fathers experience the nightmare Kinnell explores in this 10-chapter poem: Birth is the beginning of the end. Everyone we meet, especially our beloved daughters and sons, are dying as soon as they emerge crying. If that seems trite or uninteresting, don’t bother. If, like me, you felt the chill shadow of mortality when you first held a son or daughter, this poem is for you. This poem depicts the thin line between sanity and insanity, between living and dying, between community and emptiness. It’s truly The Book of Nightmares.
Be warned: Kinnell dismantles the support of the Christian church as well as New Age beliefs in his narrative. Without a God-given plan or purpose, Kinnell’s narrative is bleaker, emptier. For me, it made the nightmare worse. Everyone is born to die. What do we do when faced with that irrefutable fact? Kinnell’s narrator slips through the poem searching and questioning, and while there’s faint glimmers of hope, it’s difficult to discern in the dark wanderings.
In the end, Kinnell’s book is oddly satisfying. Kinnell is asking questions for which no philosopher has provided soul-reassuring answers in thousands of years of thinking, questions we should clearly understand and ponder deeply. With these questions guiding us, we are better prepared for the inevitable tragedies fate has prepared for us:
We who live out our plain lives, who put
our hand into the hand of whatever we love
as it vanishes,
as we vanish,
and stumble toward what will be, simply by arriving,
a kind of fate…
”The Call Across the Valley of Not-Knowing”
on our hillside, and you cried
in the crib rocking
through the darkness, on wood
knifed down to the curve of the smile, a sadness
stranger than ours, all of it
flowing from the other world,
I used to come to you
and sit by you
and sing to you.
”Under the Maud Moon”
Many fathers experience the nightmare Kinnell explores in this 10-chapter poem: Birth is the beginning of the end. Everyone we meet, especially our beloved daughters and sons, are dying as soon as they emerge crying. If that seems trite or uninteresting, don’t bother. If, like me, you felt the chill shadow of mortality when you first held a son or daughter, this poem is for you. This poem depicts the thin line between sanity and insanity, between living and dying, between community and emptiness. It’s truly The Book of Nightmares.
Be warned: Kinnell dismantles the support of the Christian church as well as New Age beliefs in his narrative. Without a God-given plan or purpose, Kinnell’s narrative is bleaker, emptier. For me, it made the nightmare worse. Everyone is born to die. What do we do when faced with that irrefutable fact? Kinnell’s narrator slips through the poem searching and questioning, and while there’s faint glimmers of hope, it’s difficult to discern in the dark wanderings.
In the end, Kinnell’s book is oddly satisfying. Kinnell is asking questions for which no philosopher has provided soul-reassuring answers in thousands of years of thinking, questions we should clearly understand and ponder deeply. With these questions guiding us, we are better prepared for the inevitable tragedies fate has prepared for us:
We who live out our plain lives, who put
our hand into the hand of whatever we love
as it vanishes,
as we vanish,
and stumble toward what will be, simply by arriving,
a kind of fate…
”The Call Across the Valley of Not-Knowing”
May 17, 2018
*2.5*
this collection of poetry felt like a word perpetually stuck at the tipof my tongue. i could feel it; i could sense around it; sometimes, even briefly, i could savour it. but in the end, i couldn't grasp it, couldn't really connect its underlying structure as if my mind kept being entertained by the sliver of an intriguing verse only for it to disappear into a mungle, strange background.
i don't think i will be reading more collections from this author. so many writers to read, so little time to waste on people who are just not my cup of tea
this collection of poetry felt like a word perpetually stuck at the tipof my tongue. i could feel it; i could sense around it; sometimes, even briefly, i could savour it. but in the end, i couldn't grasp it, couldn't really connect its underlying structure as if my mind kept being entertained by the sliver of an intriguing verse only for it to disappear into a mungle, strange background.
i don't think i will be reading more collections from this author. so many writers to read, so little time to waste on people who are just not my cup of tea
September 13, 2008
I enjoyed it. But it's not the masterpiece I've heard it was from some. The language wasn't fresh enough in places, the symbolism too heavy-handed, or in places the poem felt too easy, or too dramatic. Sometimes it went back to a very superficial place, a very predictable nightmare of the flesh. But there were lines that I really liked. Like "Let our scars fall in love" and "I have felt the zero/freeze itself around the finger dipped slowly in."
January 7, 2022
Really amazing - Dylan Thomas has his worms, and Galway has his hens. And his hen-blood and hen-oil. Moments of brilliance. Extended moments, but a little too many touches of the Greek epic wandering for me to really, truly LOVE it.
July 16, 2007
This deserves a higher ranking; it's my favorite single book of poetry.
July 5, 2010
Well holy smokin' firepits. This is not to be described by any other word but EXQUISITE.
December 27, 2025
this book is magnificent
November 14, 2023
I equate this to listening to Neutral Milk Hotel: I don't know what the words or imagery mean most of the time, but I know how it makes me feel and that's enough for me.
January 1, 2021
Great ending to 2020. With four minutes to spare.
October 21, 2022
the flames may burn the oboe
but listen buddy boy they can’t touch the notes!
.......
To the last man surviving on earth
I give my eyelids worn out by fear, to wear
in his long nights of radiation and silence,
so that his eyes can’t close, for regret
is like tears seeping through closed eyelids.
--G.K.
........
--Ten woodcuts, plus the cover depicted here, are reproduced in this collection. Public domain, no doubt. But still I would’ve liked to know the source(s).
The Book of Nightmares is a (1971) collection of ten connected poems, each with seven sections, dedicated to the poet’s infant daughter, Maud, and newborn son, Fergus.
This is a collection with contrasts, to put it mildly: horror juxtaposed here and there with great beauty, which is part of what makes these poems memorable and still vital more than fifty years on.
The opener, Under the Maud Moon, includes these lines (meant to toughen up the tyke, perhaps):
I used to come to you
and sit by you
and sing to you. You did not know,
and yet you will remember
in the silent zones
of the brain, a specter, descendent
of the ghostly forefathers, singing
to you in the nighttime—
not the songs
of light said to wave
through the bright hair of angels,
but a blacker rasping flowering on that tongue (…)
(And) in the days
when you find yourself orphaned,
emptied
of all wind-singing, of light,
the pieces of cursed bread on your tongue,
may there come back to you
a voice,
spectral, calling you
sister!
from everything that dies.
And then
you shall open
this book, even if it is the book of nightmares
….
And in the closing poem, these lines for poor, itty-bitty Fergus:
And he opened
his eyes: his head out there all alone
in the room, he squinted with pained,
barely unglued eyes at the ninth-month’s
blood splashing beneath him
on the floor. And almost
smiled, I thought, almost forgave it all in advance.
….
On the river the world floats by holding one corpse.
…..
Well! Sweet dreams my children, indeed! And these are among the mildest lines.
But wait … these poems also contain generous (make that “some”) portions of love, sweetness, light and that good stuff. (Well, relatively sweet anyway.) :
When I sleepwalk
into your room, and pick you up,
and hold you up in the moonlight, you cling to me hard,
as if clinging could save us. I think
you think
I will never die, I think I exude
to you the permanence of smoke or stars,
even as
my broken arms heal themselves around you.
(And—from the opener, once again—this):
I stop,
Gather wet wood,
cut dry shaving, and for her,
whose face
I held in my hand
a few hours, whom I gave back
only to keep holding the space where she was,
I light
a small fire in the rain.
.....
Truthfully? Bright-lit lines like that are the exception rather than the rule. It is, after all, The Book of Nightmares. Throughout are musings on death, war, hens murdered by weasels, haunted shoes … Assorted images to sweep one’s youngsters into dreamland.
Or prepare them for the rough road ahead.
Selected lines (the first par. is on Vietnam):
My tongue goes to the Secretary of the Dead
to tell the corpses, “I’m sorry fellows,
the killing was just one of those things
difficult to pre-visualize–like a cow,
say, getting hit by lightning.”
….
Is it the foot,
which rubs the cobblestones
and snakestones all its days, this lowliest
of tongues, whose lick-tracks tell
our history of errors to the dust behind,
which is the last trace in us
of wings?
And is it
the hen’s nightmare, or her secret dream,
to scratch the ground forever,
eating the minutes out of the grains of sand?
….
So little of what one is threads itself through the eye
of empty space.
Never mind.
The self is the least of it.
Let our scars fall in love.
….
I like this little quote so much I'll close with it as well. Might make a good bumper sticker! "Look at that car, Mabel. What the hell does that mean?!”
the flames may burn the oboe
but listen buddy boy they can’t touch the notes!
--Galway Kinnell 1924-2014
but listen buddy boy they can’t touch the notes!
.......
To the last man surviving on earth
I give my eyelids worn out by fear, to wear
in his long nights of radiation and silence,
so that his eyes can’t close, for regret
is like tears seeping through closed eyelids.
--G.K.
........
--Ten woodcuts, plus the cover depicted here, are reproduced in this collection. Public domain, no doubt. But still I would’ve liked to know the source(s).
The Book of Nightmares is a (1971) collection of ten connected poems, each with seven sections, dedicated to the poet’s infant daughter, Maud, and newborn son, Fergus.
This is a collection with contrasts, to put it mildly: horror juxtaposed here and there with great beauty, which is part of what makes these poems memorable and still vital more than fifty years on.
The opener, Under the Maud Moon, includes these lines (meant to toughen up the tyke, perhaps):
I used to come to you
and sit by you
and sing to you. You did not know,
and yet you will remember
in the silent zones
of the brain, a specter, descendent
of the ghostly forefathers, singing
to you in the nighttime—
not the songs
of light said to wave
through the bright hair of angels,
but a blacker rasping flowering on that tongue (…)
(And) in the days
when you find yourself orphaned,
emptied
of all wind-singing, of light,
the pieces of cursed bread on your tongue,
may there come back to you
a voice,
spectral, calling you
sister!
from everything that dies.
And then
you shall open
this book, even if it is the book of nightmares
….
And in the closing poem, these lines for poor, itty-bitty Fergus:
And he opened
his eyes: his head out there all alone
in the room, he squinted with pained,
barely unglued eyes at the ninth-month’s
blood splashing beneath him
on the floor. And almost
smiled, I thought, almost forgave it all in advance.
….
On the river the world floats by holding one corpse.
…..
Well! Sweet dreams my children, indeed! And these are among the mildest lines.
But wait … these poems also contain generous (make that “some”) portions of love, sweetness, light and that good stuff. (Well, relatively sweet anyway.) :
When I sleepwalk
into your room, and pick you up,
and hold you up in the moonlight, you cling to me hard,
as if clinging could save us. I think
you think
I will never die, I think I exude
to you the permanence of smoke or stars,
even as
my broken arms heal themselves around you.
(And—from the opener, once again—this):
I stop,
Gather wet wood,
cut dry shaving, and for her,
whose face
I held in my hand
a few hours, whom I gave back
only to keep holding the space where she was,
I light
a small fire in the rain.
.....
Truthfully? Bright-lit lines like that are the exception rather than the rule. It is, after all, The Book of Nightmares. Throughout are musings on death, war, hens murdered by weasels, haunted shoes … Assorted images to sweep one’s youngsters into dreamland.
Or prepare them for the rough road ahead.
Selected lines (the first par. is on Vietnam):
My tongue goes to the Secretary of the Dead
to tell the corpses, “I’m sorry fellows,
the killing was just one of those things
difficult to pre-visualize–like a cow,
say, getting hit by lightning.”
….
Is it the foot,
which rubs the cobblestones
and snakestones all its days, this lowliest
of tongues, whose lick-tracks tell
our history of errors to the dust behind,
which is the last trace in us
of wings?
And is it
the hen’s nightmare, or her secret dream,
to scratch the ground forever,
eating the minutes out of the grains of sand?
….
So little of what one is threads itself through the eye
of empty space.
Never mind.
The self is the least of it.
Let our scars fall in love.
….
I like this little quote so much I'll close with it as well. Might make a good bumper sticker! "Look at that car, Mabel. What the hell does that mean?!”
the flames may burn the oboe
but listen buddy boy they can’t touch the notes!
--Galway Kinnell 1924-2014
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