October 30, 2014
I just read an e-mail written by an ex-student of mine, in which he announced that the poet Galway Kinnell had just died. Here's what I wrote him back:
Thanks, Tim.
Yeah, I heard about Galway's passing this morning. Sad news, but he had a long life's worth of many beautiful and moving poems. Some of my memories of him:
I remember reading his great book-length poem, The Book of Nightmares, when I was a teenager. I was sitting at my dad's old desk, where he would make his insurance salesman calls. I remember reading parts over and over again, like the end of the poem's first part, "Under the Maud Moon," and then staring awestruck at my dad's lead cards afterward. I'm not sure I had ever encountered language that powerful before.
Part of my undergraduate senior thesis at Reed College was on Galway's work, and he was kind enough to send me a card thanking me when I sent it the finished copy. I still have it somewhere. He wrote that my reading of his work was more erudite than that of many "adult," much more professional critics. I think now that it was his way he was making fun of them.
I also saw Galway read from his work a few times, and he was always a pretty powerful one. Once, when a phone rang in an adjoining room, he revised his poem mid-reading to include a ringing phone. Another time, in Portland, someone fainted in the back of the room while he was reading. He waited patiently, not moving, not saying a word, as the poor fellow was carried away. Then he asked if should start his interrupted poem from the beginning again. I think it was at that reading, when he read the last section of The Book of Nightmares, about the birth of his son, he came to the section about first holding him after he was born:
I just read an e-mail written by an ex-student of mine, in which he announced that the poet Galway Kinnell had just died. Here's what I wrote him back:
Thanks, Tim.
Yeah, I heard about Galway's passing this morning. Sad news, but he had a long life's worth of many beautiful and moving poems. Some of my memories of him:
I remember reading his great book-length poem, The Book of Nightmares, when I was a teenager. I was sitting at my dad's old desk, where he would make his insurance salesman calls. I remember reading parts over and over again, like the end of the poem's first part, "Under the Maud Moon," and then staring awestruck at my dad's lead cards afterward. I'm not sure I had ever encountered language that powerful before.
Part of my undergraduate senior thesis at Reed College was on Galway's work, and he was kind enough to send me a card thanking me when I sent it the finished copy. I still have it somewhere. He wrote that my reading of his work was more erudite than that of many "adult," much more professional critics. I think now that it was his way he was making fun of them.
I also saw Galway read from his work a few times, and he was always a pretty powerful one. Once, when a phone rang in an adjoining room, he revised his poem mid-reading to include a ringing phone. Another time, in Portland, someone fainted in the back of the room while he was reading. He waited patiently, not moving, not saying a word, as the poor fellow was carried away. Then he asked if should start his interrupted poem from the beginning again. I think it was at that reading, when he read the last section of The Book of Nightmares, about the birth of his son, he came to the section about first holding him after he was born:
When he came wholly forth
I took him up in my hands and bent
over and smelled
the black, glistening fur
of his head, as empty space
must have bent
over the newborn planet
and smelled the grasslands and the ferns.
It seemed to me that the whole audience rose
to our feet as one when we heard that simile.
Later on, when I heard
Galway read at Columbia in the 1980's when I was a graduate student there, he seemed
a bit needy at the time. I remember him looking at me, sitting in the front row
off to the side, as if for approval, and then smiling when I nodded my head at
him.
I first met him when I was an undergraduate, when he came for a reading at Reed College. He leaned over as he shook my hand, and whispered that James Merrill would like me very much. I read Galway's poem, "The Bear," to my English 2260H (Honors Intro to Poetry) students earlier this semester. Most of them stared at me afterward, looking a bit stunned and silenced by the gravity of its words and music. I don't think they had ever encountered a poem like that, or even knew if this poem, about, among other things, a bear hunter who eats bear turds in order to survive in the Arctic, was even a poem at all. I think now, many weeks later, they know.
I first met him when I was an undergraduate, when he came for a reading at Reed College. He leaned over as he shook my hand, and whispered that James Merrill would like me very much. I read Galway's poem, "The Bear," to my English 2260H (Honors Intro to Poetry) students earlier this semester. Most of them stared at me afterward, looking a bit stunned and silenced by the gravity of its words and music. I don't think they had ever encountered a poem like that, or even knew if this poem, about, among other things, a bear hunter who eats bear turds in order to survive in the Arctic, was even a poem at all. I think now, many weeks later, they know.
And that's the important thing: Galway's poems still live on with us and thrive, even if the poet has passed on.
He will be missed.
Hope you're well, my friend,
Stuart
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