Galway Kinnel was born Feb. 1st, 1927 in Providence, Rhode Island. I picked up his book Strong Is Your Hold published by Houghton Mifflin Company. He has won the Pulitzer Prize and has published several books of translations in addition to his own work. You can also find out more by clicking the link below. What I love best about this book is that it comes with a CD of his poems so you can hear the author reading aloud, isn’t that wonderful? And as usual, I have picked this book up at my local library. Have I mentioned how wonderful and convenient libraries are? If you don’t have a library that you frequent I strongly urge you to do so, after all, they’re your tax dollars.
Galway Kinnel’s poems are plain-spoken, just the way I like it, and he depicts wonderful moments in life such as a bear in the backyard, or the time his son at the age of four sat on his own birthday cake by accident. Every day poems are sometimes just what we need to get us going in the morning, or wind down in the evening. His are perfectly paired with a cup of coffee on a lazy day when you are content to look out the window or sit on the porch and take in the view. In his poem, “The Quick and the Dead” he speaks of a garden pest: “Bending close,/I find the plump body of the vole./I lobbed him here myself,/…./He’s dead, and yet he lives,/he jerks, he heaves, he shudders,/” The poem is gruesome yet you can’t stop reading it, and you think back to all the times you have stumbled across something similar. He also speaks of the World Trade Center and the various angles of life and death there. No matter the poem, Mr. Kinnell is able to hold your attention and remind you of life outside of yourself. For more information you can click the links included below, and I hope you pick up his book when you happen upon it.
http://poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=3753
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/212
Thanks for reading, please stop in for another poetry web-site for Monday.
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