"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
How many nights must it takeKinnell is a poet who feels life most keenly as it slips through his fingers. Nothing lasts, but this is less cause for lament than for celebration; after all, he tells us, "the wages / of dying is love." Before we break out the booze and have ourselves a ball, however, there are the poems from his brutal Book of Nightmares to consider, with their apocalyptic howling; his Vermont poems, with their "silent, startled, icy, black language / of blackberry eating in late September"; the noise and clatter of his early New York poems, "Where instants of transcendence / Drift in oceans of loathing and fear..." Kinnell is a poet with a leg in each world, one up above where the bears and porcupines live, and one down below, in what we might call the imaginative underworld. Witness the stunning progression of "When One Has Lived a Long Time Alone," in which he is both Orpheus and a misanthropic Eurydice, singing himself back to the company of the human. How glad we are that Kinnell failed to look back! In the tender "Little Sleep's-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight," the poet advises his infant daughter, "Kiss / the mouth / that tells you, here, / here is the world." After reading these poems, you might feel like doing the same. --Mary Park
one such as me to learn
that we aren't, after all, made
from that bird that flies out of its ashes,
that for us
as we go up in flames, our one work
is
to open ourselves, to be
the flames?
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Shipping:
US$ 4.95
Within U.S.A.
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Near Fine. Limited Edition. Special Edition one of 200 signed and numbered copies, this being #81. A nice copy, slight fading to the spine, else Near Fine in a Near Fine slipcase. Seller Inventory # 627955
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Fine. First edition. Spine with a touch of rubbing, else fine in about fine slipcase. Copy number 130 of 200 numbered copies Signed by the poet. Winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Seller Inventory # 577509
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Fine. First edition. Spine with a touch of rubbing, else fine in about fine slipcase. Copy number 131 of 200 numbered copies Signed by the poet. Winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Seller Inventory # 579471
Book Description hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Very Good. book. Seller Inventory # D8S0-3-M-0395321581-4