{"id":78777,"date":"2014-10-30T14:13:32","date_gmt":"2014-10-30T18:13:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=78777"},"modified":"2014-10-31T12:34:58","modified_gmt":"2014-10-31T16:34:58","slug":"galway-kinnell-1927-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/10\/30\/galway-kinnell-1927-2014\/","title":{"rendered":"Galway Kinnell, 1927\u20132014"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"kinnell\"<\/a>

Photo via GalwayKinnell.com<\/p><\/div>\n

Galway Kinnell, who aspired to a poetics that \u201ccould be understood without a graduate degree,\u201d died on Tuesday in Vermont, at eighty-seven. A winner of both the Pulitzer and the National Book Award, Kinnell wrote poems that \u201cdwell on the ugly as fully, as far and as long as I could stomach it,\u201d as he once told the Los Angeles Times<\/em>. \u201cI think if you are ever going to find any kind of truth to poetry it has to be based on all of experience rather than on a narrow segment of cheerful events.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tony Hoagland said that Kinnell\u2019s primary subjects were \u201cmortality, erotic love, and creatureness.\u201d That might make him sound solemn, But Kinnell, who was born in Rhode Island, could also be exceptionally warm, especially when his subject was New England. An obituary by the Associated Press<\/a> quotes Major Jackson, who included Kinnell among \u201cthe great quintessential poets of his generation\u201d:<\/p>\n

\n

In my mind he comes behind that other great New England poet Robert Frost in his ability to write about, not only the landscape of New England, but also its people \u2026 Without any great effort it was almost as if the people and the land were one and he acknowledged what I like to call a romantic consciousness.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It would be hard to overstate the effect of Kinnell\u2019s poems on the form at large. \u201cI don\u2019t think Galway Kinnell influenced me, but what\u2019s more important, he inspired me,\u201d Philip Levine said in his Art of Poetry interview<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

When I read his great poem \u201cThe Avenue Bearing the Initial of Christ into the New World,\u201d I said, My God, this is how good the poetry of my generation can be. I can remember exactly where I was when I first read it, on the second floor of the library in an armchair holding The Hudson Review<\/em> and shivering with excitement.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Review<\/em> published Kinnell\u2019s poems throughout his career; his work first appeared in our Spring 1965 issue. We\u2019ve made available one of those earlier poems, \u201cOn the Frozen Field<\/a>,\u201d which begins:<\/p>\n

\n

We walk across the snow,
The stars can be faint,
The moon can be eating itself out,
There can be meteors flaring to death on earth,
The Northern Lights can bloom and seethe
And be tearing themselves apart all night,
We walk arm in arm, and we are happy.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

You can also read \u201cThe Geese<\/a>,\u201d from our Summer 1985 issue, and \u201cLackawanna<\/a>,\u201d from Fall 1994. But best of all is \u201cAnother Night in the Ruins,\u201d which Kinnell read at a Review<\/em> salon in 2001; you can hear the recording here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Galway Kinnell, who aspired to a poetics that \u201ccould be understood without a graduate degree,\u201d died on Tuesday in Vermont, at eighty-seven. A winner of both the Pulitzer and the National Book Award, Kinnell wrote poems that \u201cdwell on the ugly as fully, as far and as long as I could stomach it,\u201d as he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[7432,1132,1471,5014,11989,3199,7221,165,605,14627,7519],"class_list":["post-78777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-memoriam","tag-galway-kinnell","tag-interviews","tag-major-jackson","tag-new-england","tag-obituaries","tag-philip-levine","tag-poems","tag-poetry","tag-readings","tag-recordings","tag-the-art-of-poetry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nGalway Kinnell, 1927\u20132014<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In memory of the American poet, a look at his work in our archive\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/10\/30\/galway-kinnell-1927-2014\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Galway Kinnell, 1927\u20132014 by Dan Piepenbring\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"October 30, 2014 \u2013 Galway Kinnell, who aspired to a poetics that \u201ccould be understood without a graduate degree,\u201d died on Tuesday in Vermont, at eighty-seven. 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