Collected Poems

by Galway Kinnell, Edward Hirsch (Introduction)

The essential collection by the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winner who was “one of the true master poets of his generation” (The New York Times).   In the words of Galway Kinnell, it is “the poet’s job to figure out what’s happening within oneself, to figure out the connection between the self and the world, and to get it down in words that have a lasting shape, that have a chance of lasting.” With this deeply probing and restlessly curious sensibility, Kinnell spend decades producing some of American poetry’s most beloved and revered works.   This comprehensive volume includes Kinnell’s expansive poem of immigrant life on the Lower East Side of New York, “The Avenue Bearing the Initial of Christ into the New World,”; his incantatory book-length poem, The Book of Nightmares; and a searing evocation of Hiroshima in “The Fundamental Project of Technology.” It covers the iconic themes of Kinnell’s middle years—eros, family, and the natural world—in works such as “After Making Love We Hear Footsteps,” “The Bear,” “Saint Francis and the Sow,” and “Blackberry Eating.” And includes the unflinchingly introspective work of his later years.   Spanning six decades, this is the essential collection for old and new devotees of Galway “a poet of the rarest ability…who can flesh out music, raise the spirits, and break the heart” (Boston Globe).

Genres: Poetry, Anthologies

642 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 5, 2017

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

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Does the past ever get too heavy to lug around?” (3.5 stars)

I am not sure why I picked up COLLECTED POEMS by Galway Kinnell. I might have read a poem or two of his in college, but they didn’t leave much of an impression. Still, when I spotted the book at a local discount store for a great price, I thought, “Why not?”

As I’ve been reading through Kinnell’s work, I’ve been reminded of a truth about poetry: you can read dozens of poems that don’t move you, but then one comes along that hits you like a lightning bolt. That’s the magic of poetry—it has the power to resonate deeply when it connects. Kinnell’s poetry exemplifies this. Great poets understand the value of words and their placement, and while I wouldn’t call myself a devoted fan of Kinnell’s work, several of his pieces moved me profoundly. One such poem was “Little Sleep’s-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight”. It’s hauntingly beautiful and has stayed with me, embodying the kind of experience that defines great art.

COLLECTED POEMS spans Kinnell’s entire career, from his earliest collections to his final works. Like any long creative journey, it’s a mixed bag—there are hits and misses. His 1980 collection MORTAL ACTS, MORTAL WORDS stands out to me as his strongest, with many of its pieces leaving a lasting impression.

Among the individual poems, here are a few that stuck with me for various reasons:
"Fisherman" is a poignant lament for a friend mourning the loss of his wife.
"Conception" is thought-provoking; it made me pause and reflect, though I’m still unsure how I feel about it.
"Promissory Note" contemplates death and meaning, themes that have long been explored by artists, but Kinnell delivers them powerfully in this compact poem.
"Passion" offers a lovely realization about romantic love.
"The Avenue Bearing the Initial of Christ into the New World" is a long poem bursting with auditory imagery. While I don’t typically favor long poems, this one intrigued me.
"For Robert Frost" is simple, accessible, and immediately likable.
“Conversation (For Maud)” asks a lot of the questions that in our quiet moments, and in our mundane moments, we ask of ourselves. It’s reflective and very true to life.
“Last Gods” is one of the most subtly erotic depictions of making love I have ever come across.
“The Choir” is a short piece that celebrates the ability of music to meet any occasion.

Kinnell’s use of nature imagery is another highlight. Poems like “Middle of the Way” really spoke to me, and the “Spindrift” —while brilliant in its own right—almost defies easy explanation. This line from that poem, contemplating the ocean tide has not left me, “It is the most we know of time, And it is our undermusic of eternity.”

Some lines (out of context obviously) that have stuck with me:
• “Where do you think you might have ended up if you had turned around?”
• “Of all the varieties of pain, loneliness may be the most lonely.”
• “…friends who have figured out what they have figured out by sounding it upon the other.”
• “…with the failing marriage of solitude and happiness.”
• “Love is the religion that bereaves the bereft.”
• “I’m just a naked body, a body not as it was, nor as it wishes to be, but as it is.”
• “…all those Who took it easy when they should have been failing at something- “
• “If love had not smiled we would never grieve.”
• “…the wages of dying is love.”
• “Everyone while singing is beautiful.”
• “And so just as you are, sing, even if you cry; the bravery of the singing turns it into the true song…”

Overall, COLLECTED POEMS is an ambitious and comprehensive anthology of a lifetime’s work. While not every piece resonated with me, his collection “The Book of Nightmares” had some pieces I loathed, the omnibus as a whole showcases Kinnell’s artistry and growth over the years. For me, the high points—particularly his 1980 collection—made the journey worthwhile.

[Kristy · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Stars

"Darkness swept the earth in my dream,
Cold crowded streets with its wings,
Cold talons pursued each river and stream
Into the mountains, found out their springs
And drilled the dark world with ice."

This is the kind of poetry I love. Verses aren't just sentences broken into parts; instead they have meaning that's not always glaringly obvious but at the same time I don't have to create a research project to decipher them. His words spoke to me, some more than others, but his emotions were present in them all.

"I sat here as a boy
On these winter rocks, watching
The moon-shapes toil through the nights
I thought then the moon
Only wears her mortality."

I hadn't heard of Kinnell before this, but what better way to be introduced to a great poet than by reading his collected poems? I loved starting and ending my day by reading a handful of his poems.

This book is thick (over 600 pages), and I'll admit I didn't enjoy every poem, but on a whole I would recommend this collection to any poetry lover.

"We wander slowly homeward, lost
in the history of every step."

[Jim Manis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kinnell is one of the important poets from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. I'm not sure how many people remember his work now, but such is the fate of most poets and, for the most part, writers in general. I did have the pleasure of hearing him read in person in 1979/80 while I was a graduate student.

I don't find anything groundbreaking about Kinnell's work. He is, however, a solid representative of the period: an academic with unkept hair and a rich voice. Sometimes the vocabulary gets in the way of the music.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Collected Poems of Galway Kinnell offer an exciting look into a distinguished career spanning more that fifty decades. What I enjoy most about Collected works—Kinnell's work included—is that it allows the reader to see the change in writing styles, tones, and themes. In this Collected, Kinnell's poetic voice journeys from one formal verse to work concerned with the human experience and socio-political upheaval in mid-career to more personal poems in his later years.

Quite a number of these poems—many of them well-known and loved—moved me, including "When the Towers Fell," a tribute to the everyday victims of the World Trade Center Attacks. In "The River That Is East," Kinnell presents not only an ode of sorts to the East River in New York, but the thesis for the body of his work: "He watches the snowfall hitting the dirty water. / He thinks: Beautiful. Beautiful."

The Collected Poems also included Kinnell's poems to or about poets: Emma Lazarus, Emily Dickinson, William Carlos Williams, Denise Levertov, and Robert Frost to name a few.

One of the most moving poems in the collection, "Parkinson's Disease," offers up a hint into not only the question of human spirit, but in poetic works as well: "Could heaven be a time, after we are dead, / of remembering the knowledge / flesh hand from flesh?"

Galway Kinnell's Collected gives reader this knowledge, long after he's gone, even after we're gone, of beauty in a world where towers fall, people get ill, children in faraway lands starve, but the writers are our voices of faith and mystery.

[James Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this man's poetry. Apparently I can't get enough. I reread his Selected Poems last year. They weren't enough, I had to have them all. He sees the divine in everything mingled with the inherent loss of everything, and he makes it beautiful.

[Willy Marz Thiessam · Rating 4 out of 5]

You can't read Galway Kinnell without a sense of the spiritual in everyday life. His collected works are a real treat.

Kinnell produced poems so deceptively simple they appear to take a sideways look at the universe from ordinary life and thoughts. Everyday speculations appear to be a universe outside of the everyday.

As with all poetry, it may not be a style for everyone but Kinnell was a brilliant poetical voice that gave beautiful poems throughout his career.

I would definitely recommend this book for people who love poetry as well as for those who shy away from the esoteric. This book brings out the rich spiritual nature one can find in life at any age.

[Robert Walkley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Before I read this book I only knew of Kinnell's work from his middle period: from "Body Rags" to "The Past." It was a great surprise to me to see how strong a writer he was throughout his whole career, from his early, more formal poem to the looser and longer poems late in life. Edward Hirsch, who wrote the introduction sees Kinnell as following in the tradition, if not the footsteps, of Walt Whitman. And the CP is, therefore, Kinnell's "Leaves of Grass." Maybe. But I see a deeper connection in Kinnell's New England roots, which puts him more in the tradition of Frost and Dickinson.

[Jenny · Rating 3 out of 5]

Every once in a while, you read something that leaves you speechless and all you can do is make incoherent Good Book Noises. Galway Kinnell has given me two such poems--"Shelley" and "Oatmeal". This collection of his poetry has a handful of other poems that were genuinely delightful, but I found myself indifferent to (or even skipping over) many of the others.

Kinnell is clearly a brilliant poet, and when he hits the mark, he's dead on. But there were lot of pages to wade through to find those gems.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[An · Rating 4 out of 5]

The late Galway Kinnell (1927 - 2014) was a Pulitzer Prize-winner and former poet laureate of the state of Vermont. This giant tome covers 68 years of Galway Kinnell's poetry, dated from 1946 to 2014. The writings are organized in chronological order by the year published and feature over 250 poems, including one of my favorites: After Making Love We Hear Footsteps

For I can snore like a bullhorn
or play loud music
or sit up talking with any reasonably sober Irishman
and Fergus will only sink deeper
into his dreamless sleep, which goes by all in one flash,
but let there be that heavy breathing
or a stifled come-cry anywhere in the house
and he will wrench himself awake
and make for it on the run—as now, we lie together,
after making love, quiet, touching along the length of our bodies,
familiar touch of the long-married,
and he appears—in his baseball pajamas, it happens,
the neck opening so small he has to screw them on—
and flops down between us and hugs us and snuggles himself to sleep,
his face gleaming with satisfaction at being this very child.

In the half darkness we look at each other
and smile
and touch arms across this little, startlingly muscled body—
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.

Note: I received an ARC through Goodreads' Giveaways. Collected Poems is now available in bookstores and online.

[Gerry LaFemina · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've spent the last two weeks reading the collected poems of Galway Kinnell each morning. It has been the 14 best mornings of my forties. Kinnell's sheer mastery of tone, of language, of human understanding--his capacity to go from wisdom to shit and back again remind me, again and again, why I fell in love with poetry to begin with.

[Joseph Spuckler]

The Collected Poems of Galway Kinnell by Galway Kinnell is a collection of sixty-five years of writing. Kinnell, a Navy veteran, experienced Europe and the Middle East while serving. He was also involved in the civil rights movement. Kinnell was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award for Selected Poems and he studied at Princeton and earned his Master's degree from the University of Rochester.

The tome of the work is presented in several sections reflecting publications and time. His earlier work takes the form of more traditional poetry with sights and feelings of his ports of call in the navy, particularly France and India.

What storms have blown me, and from where,
What dreams have drowned, or half dead, here
...
Each year I lived I watched the fissure
Between what was and what I wished for
Widen, until there was nothing left
But the gulf of emptiness.

The traditional form is partly owed to his admiration of Walt Whitman. He then moves to more of a "Beat" type of poetry. His work seems influenced by the movement even though he was not an active participant. His work in the late 1960s and 1970s moves much more into nature poems:

On the tidal mud just before sunset, 
dozens of starfishes
were creeping. It was
as though the mud were a sky
and enormous, imperfect stars
moved across it slowly
as the actual stars cross heaven

In the 1980s through the 2000s Kinnell finds himself writing as an experienced sage.  He relies on his personal experience and knowledge to create his mature works.  Here, the poems reflect on aging and the death of those who were close and the lives of his children. Kinnell also speaks frequently of religion, but not in the most positive sense. His short poem "Prayer":

Whatever happens. Whatever
what is is is what
I want. Only that. But that.

He had a strong dislike for Christianity.  Some of that can be seen in the long poem, written in the early 1960s, "The Avenue Bearing the Initial of Christ into the New World":

A roadway of refuse from the teeming shores and ghettos
And the Caribbean Paradise, into the new ghetto and new paradise,
This God-forsaken Avenue bearing the initial of Christ.

Before reading this collected works, I had not read any Kinnell poetry.  Although I was impressed with several poems his two most anthologized poems slipped by me-- "St. Francis and the Sow" and "After Making Love We Hear Footsteps".  His poems from the from the 1970s and later poems appealed the most to me.  The widespread of his poetry and the evolving topics will sure to find favor with other readers with different tastes than my own.  As a collected work, Kinnell's poems, show his growth and refinement as a poet.  The introduction by Edward Hirsch will give the reader ample information and background on the poet and his poems.  A well-done collection that will allow the reader to pick and choose his or her favorite topics or simply give the reader something to pick up and randomly read. 

[Professor Typewriter · Rating 4 out of 5]

The poetry of Galway Kinnell is extraordinary, noble, and stellar. I spent several Friday mornings reading through this tome and it was time well spent. What makes Kinnell’s poems remarkable was his mastery of diction, imagery, and humor. Kinnell was not afraid to take risks. The poignant poems will take your breath away. The verses he wrote memory of his contemporary poets are beautiful and elegant. Galway Kinnell is a vastly underrated poet. Do yourself a favor and read this collection. Not only will you enjoy it, but the collection will also teach you that poetry is both created by inspiration and stubborn will.

[Ingrid · Rating 1 out of 5]

A collection of poetry that feels extremely dated and inconsequential. Kinnell’s work consists largely of transcendentalist-influenced meditations on nature and slice-of-life vignettes, most of which are not very compelling. The two strongest books, “The Book of Nightmares” and “Mortal Acts, Mortal Words,” deal with death and mortality, and thus feel more substantive than the rest of the collection, but even here I think his poems contain a lot of chaff and should have been edited down further.

[Bryn]

Kinnell is a good poet, and I am glad to have read what I did, but it felt very much of a muchness no matter where in the book I looked, and... there is just something in what he is evoking (at least in the earlier poems which is where I concentrated my attention) that I am not very interested in -- a sort of masculinity I recognise from other work of the period, focused on being solitary and relating to nature in a particular way and relating to women in a particular way -- I don't hate it, but 100 pages of poetry was really enough of it for right now.

[Leonard · Rating 5 out of 5]

These poems by the late Kinnell are easy to read and very enjoyable with just the right amount of mystery. I intended to read only a few of the poems in this book but read over 150 pages. It was hard to put it down.

[Sarah · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not for me at all. But I did like the poems "Last Gods", " Rapture" and "Promissory Note".

[Jacqui Busch · Rating 3 out of 5]

I learned I really, really don't like his early stuff. I started enjoying myself at about 1980 or so. My fave poems were "Prayer," "Wait," "The Apple," and "There Are Things I Tell to No One."

[Dale Boyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read Kinnell's work when I was a student at Vermont College, and remember liking it very much. Revisiting him now, in his Collected Poems, I'm happy to see that I still like him very much, if not more. Kinnell's early works seems very old-fashioned and derivative, and you can see him casting about for a style. But there are certain flashes of mastery along the way. For instance, I think this is one of the most remarkable poetic passages I've ever read, in a poem about his brother who died young (Freedom, New Hampshire):

But an incarnation is in particular flesh
And the dust that is swirled into a shape
And crumbles and is swirled again had but one shape
That was this man. When he is dead the grass
Heals what he suffered, but he remains dead,
And the few who loved him know this until they die.

Kinnell is a great poet of nature. His language is mostly very simple and relatable. As he gets older, he grows even wiser and more profound. This is a really sound collection with lots and lots of great writing. I enjoyed it very much, and am sure I will revisit many of these poems in the future.

[Sue]

The reason for not finishing this book is due to problems accessing Adobe Digital Reader after some recent computer updates. Nothing at all to do with the poetry or poet.