Synopses & Reviews
From the introduction by Galway Kinnell:
The poems of Walt Whitman meant little to me when I read them in high school and college. Luckily, when I was teaching at the University of Grenoble in my late twenties, I was required to give a course on Whitman. My experience of Leaves of Grass then was intense. . . . Soon I understood that poetry could be transcendent, hymn-like, a cosmic song, and yet remain idolatrously attached to the creatures and things of our world. . . . Once again, as when I first began writing, it seemed it might be possible to say everything in poetry.
About the Author
Galway Kinnell lives in Vermont and New York City. He has been the director Of an adult education program in Chicago, a journalist in Iran, and a field worker for the Congress of Racial Equality in Louisiana. During the past twenty years he has taught at colleges and universities in this country and in France and Australia. His Selected Poems, published in 1982, won the Pulitzer Prize and, with Charles Wright's Country Music, the American Book Award. His most recent book of poems is The Past. Galway Kinnell is Samuel F. B. Morse Professor of Arts and Science at New York University, where he teaches creative writing.