To me, poetry is somebody standing up, so to speak, and saying, with as little concealment as possible, what it is for him or her to be on earth at this moment — Galway Kinnell Copy Share Image
Turn on the dream you lived through the unwavering gaze. It is as you thought: the living burn. In the floating days may you… — Galway Kinnell Copy Share Image
Is there a mechanism of death, that so mutilates existence no one, gets over it not even the dead? — Galway Kinnell Copy Share Image
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… — Galway Kinnell Copy Share Image
“The Correspondence-School Instructor Says Goodbye to His Poetry Students Goodbye, lady in Bangor, who sent me snapshots of yourself, after definitely hinting you were beautiful; goodbye, Miami Beach urologist, who enclosed plain brown envelopes for the return of your very “Clinical Sonnets”; goodbye, manufacturer of brassieres on the Coast, whose eclogues give the fullest treatment in literature yet to the… — Galway Kinnell Copy Share
the rest of my days I spend wandering: wondering what, anyway, was that sticky infusion, that rank flavor of blood, that poetry, by which… — Galway Kinnell Copy Share Image
I love to go out in late September among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries to eat blackberries for breakfast, the stalks very prickly, a penalty they earn for knowing the black art of blackberry-making; and as I stand among them lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries fall almost unbidden to my tongue, as words sometimes do,… — Galway Kinnell Copy Share
“Bending over her bed, I saw the smile I must have seen when gaping up from the crib. Knowing death will come, sensing its onset, may be a fair price for consciousness. But looking at my sister, I wished she could have died by surprise, without ever knowing about death. Too late. Wendy said, “I am in three parts. Here… — Galway Kinnell Copy Share
“When the man touches through to the exact center of the woman, he lies motionless, in equilibrium, in absolute desire, at the threshold of… — Galway Kinnell Copy Share Image
“This happened to your father and to you, Galway-sick to stay, longing to come up against the ends of the earth, and climb over.” — Galway Kinnell Copy Share Image
“Wait Wait, for now. Distrust everything, if you have to. But trust the hours. Haven't they carried you everywhere, up to now? Personal events will become interesting again. Hair will become interesting. Pain will become interesting. Buds that open out of season will become lovely again. Second-hand gloves will become lovely again, their memories are what give them the need… — Galway Kinnell Copy Share
