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Galway Kinnell Biography

Galway Kinnell (February 1, 1927 – October 28, 2014) was an American poet. For his 1982 Selected Poems he won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and split the National Book Award for Poetry with Charles Wright. From 1989 to 1993 he was poet laureate for the state of Vermont.

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Galway Kinnell Quotes

I have always intended to live forever; but not until now, to live now.

Forever, Intended, Live, Live Forever

this one whom habit of memory propels to the ground of his making, sleeper only the mortal sounds can sing awake, this blessing love gives again into our arms.

Children, Memories, Blessing, Arms, Making, Ground

There are two versions to every poem – the crying version and the straight version

Cry, Poem, Straight, Two, Version, Versions

The first step in the journey is to lose your way.

Firsts, Journey, Lose, Way

The first step. . . shall be to lose the way.

Firsts, Lose, Step, Travel, Way

Is there a mechanism of death, that so mutilates existence no one, gets over it not even the dead?

Death, Existence, Get Over, Mechanism, Over It

Kiss the mouth which tells you, here, here is the world. This mouth. This laughter. These temple bones.

Bones, Kiss, Kissing, Laughter, Mouth, World

the rest of my days I spend wandering: wondering what, anyway, was that sticky infusion, that rank flavor of blood, that poetry, by which I lived?

Blood, Flavor, Poetry, Rank

Second-hand gloves will become lovely again, their memories are what give them the need for other hands. And the desolation of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness carved out of such tiny beings as we are asks to be filled; the need for the new love is faithfulness to the old.

Desolation, Hands, Love Is, Memories, Old, Same

When I sleepwalk into your room, and pick you up, and hold you up in the moonlight, you cling to me hard, as if clinging could save us. I think you think I will never die, I think I exude to you the permanence of smoke or stars, even as my broken arms heal themselves around you.

Broken, Permanence, Sleepwalk, Smoke, Stars, Thinking

Turn on the dream you lived through the unwavering gaze. It is as you thought: the living burn. In the floating days may you discover grace.

Burn, Dream, Floating, Grace, Lived, Thought

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, certain peculiar words like strengths or squinched, many-lettered, one-syllabled lumps, which I squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well in the silent, startled, icy, black language of blackberry - eating in late September.

Art, Fall, Knowing, Like, Ripest

Little sleep's-head sprouting hair in the moonlight, when I come back we will go out together, we will walk out together among, the ten thousand things, each scratched too late with such knowledge, the wages of dying is love.

Sleep, Hair, Dying, Among, Scratched, Things

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 end, this is a dead end, and so on. The search takes a long time and I have to back-track often.

Avenue, Long, Takes, Track, Trying, Turns

Prose is walking; poetry is flying

Flying, Poetry Is, Prose, Walking

Sometimes it is necessary To reteach a thing its loveliness

Loveliness, Necessary, Reteach, Sometimes, Thing

The bud stands for all things, even for those things that don't flower

All Things, Bud, Flower, Stands, Things

It is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness, to put a hand on its brow of the flower and retell it in words and in touch it is lovely until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing.

Blessing, Flower, Inspirational, Necessary, Thing, Words

Go so deep into yourself, you speak for everyone.

Deep, Everyone, Speak