Synopses & Reviews
Galway Kinnell reaffirms his status as one of the true master poets of his generation with the publication of Imperfect Thirst, his twelfth book of poems. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the American Book Award (Selected Poems, 1982) and many other awards including a MacArthur Fellowship, Kinnell is perhaps more deeply steeped in the tradition of Whitman than any of his contemporaries. He stands today in the first rank of American poets born in the 1920s. Imperfect Thirst brings together poems which delicately consider the loss of loved ones from childhood, which rejoice in the late love of women, and which face head-on the imminence and power of the shadow of death. Poems like Rapture, Running on Silk, and The Night are among the most beautiful of love poems of recent years, and poems such as Holy Shit approach their elemental subjects with a remarkable balance of good nature and holy dread. It was Morris Dickstein who heralded Kinnell as one of the true master
Synopsis
Galway Kinnell's twelfth book of poems is powerful and thrilling. Imperfect Thirst includes beautiful love poems and approaches elemental subjects with a remarkable balance of good nature and holy dread: recollections of childhood, snapshots of impassive cruelty, reflections on art and nature. This energetic collection will prove once again why Galway Kinnell is one of America's masters of the art.
About the Author
Galway Kinnell is a former MacArthur Fellow and has been state poet of Vermont. In 1982 his Selected Poems won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. For many years he was the Erich Maria Remarque Professor of Creative Writing at New York University. He is currently a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. For thirty-five years--from WHAT A KINGDOM IT WAS to THE BOOK OF NIGHTMARES to THREEE BOOKS--Galway Kinnell has been enriching American poetry, not only by his poems but also by his teaching and his powerful public readings.