Galway Kinnell
Galway Kinnell
Galway Kinnellwas an American poet. For his 1982 Selected Poems he won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and split the National Book Award for Poetry with Charles Wright. From 1989 to 1993 he was poet laureate for the state of Vermont...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth1 February 1927
CountryUnited States of America
profound way ridiculous
Thats the way it is with poetry: When it is incomprehensible it seems profound, and when you understand it, it is only ridiculous.
poetry ridiculous seems understand
That's the way it is with poetry: When it is incomprehensible it seems profound, and when you understand it, it is only ridiculous
book help led memory might people
I think it might help to keep his memory vivid, ... People might be led from one book to the other.
existence over-it get-over
Is there a mechanism of death, that so mutilates existence no one, gets over it not even the dead?
memories love-is hands
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again, their memories are what give them the need for other hands. And the desolation of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness carved out of such tiny beings as we are asks to be filled; the need for the new love is faithfulness to the old.
children memories blessing
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.
goodbye war loneliness
Goodbye, you who are, for me, the postmarks again of shattered towns--Xenia, Burnt Cabins, Hornell-- their loneliness given away in poems, only their solitude kept.
blood poetry flavor
the rest of my days I spend wandering: wondering what, anyway, was that sticky infusion, that rank flavor of blood, that poetry, by which I lived?
two cry versions
There are two versions to every poem – the crying version and the straight version
sleep hair dying
Little sleep's-head sprouting hair in the moonlight, when I come back we will go out together, we will walk out together among, the ten thousand things, each scratched too late with such knowledge, the wages of dying is love.
journey way firsts
The first step in the journey is to lose your way.
track long trying
I start off but I don't know where I'm going; I try this avenue and that avenue, that turns out to be a dead end, this is a dead end, and so on. The search takes a long time and I have to back-track often.
flower thinking glasses
The only sense we still respect is eyesight, probably because it is so closely attached to the brain. Go into any American house at random, you will find something - a plastic flower, false tiles, some imitation something - something which can be appreciated as material only if apprehended by eyesight alone. Don't we go sightseeing in cars, thinking we can experience a landscape by looking at it through glass?
flower bud all-things
The bud stands for all things, even for those things that don't flower