Arts and Letters

About the death of any friend one feels grief; with some friends, though, that grief is tempered by gratitude, by a feeling of privilege to have been able to live in the world at the same time as the one who’s gone. I knew Galway Kinnell for almost half a century, we were friends for a good part of that time, and that feeling of being fortunate to know him, honored to be in his presence, never diminished.

As most of us here already know, Galway in public and private was a singular presence, physically imposing, with the kind of efficiency and lack of excess gestures very powerful people can have, but he was also gentle in manner, warm and solicitous, and his voice had a certain resonant kindness, with overtones of sympathy and solicitude, all of which came through not only in person but when he recited his poems to his numerous and enthusiastic audiences. He was a musical, dramatic, moving reader of his own poetry, and when he had the chance he liked to read aloud the poetry of others: John Clare and Keats especially, and Whitman, and once I had the pleasure of hearing him read to an audience one of my own poems, which was, there’s no other word for it, thrilling.

A number of years ago at Princeton, it came to me to introduce Galway at a reading, and, although I’d actually already introduced him a number of times, this time, I don’t remember quite why, I decided for once to tell the truth about the way one poet can feel about another. Here is what I said then, and what I still feel:

There is a malady to which poets are susceptible, and to which they rarely admit, except to themselves, and even then only reluctantly. I’ve come to call this condition “the syndrome of the sinking heart.” What sets this syndrome in motion is coming across a poem by a poet you hadn’t known before, or sometimes a poem you hadn’t known, or sometimes even a single passage in a poem, and you’re so taken aback by its originality, its breadth and depth, its dexterity, its ingenuity, its ease, its—there’s really no other word for it—genius, that you think: “My god, how did he or she do that?” Then, all too quickly, you think, “I can’t do that.” And then, “I’ll never be able to do that, my brain can’t do that, my life can’t do that,” and that’s when the sinking heart syndrome really takes hold, because the heart does sink, down to your gut, to your shoes, to the center of the earth.

But then, fortunately, what happens, what always thank goodness happens, is that one’s envy and dismay turn to admiration and awe, which in turn lead to delight, then, and this part is always astonishing, to a kind of exaltation, which you all at once remember is what poetry is about in the first place. You’re exalted when you’re taken, captured, enraptured by such poetry, because you suddenly know that your own mind, your own life, can indeed do something, be something, you hadn’t ever conceived of them being, because the poem to which you’ve just given yourself has brought you to a way of seeing and thinking and feeling which wasn’t possible before, which simply didn’t exist for you before. So, at the end, the sinking-heart syndrome is transfigured to sheer, miraculous gratitude.

The first time I ever heard Galway read, I was still quite young—this was some time in the early nineteen sixties. I was living in Philadelphia, knew several other young poets, and one of them found out that Galway was going to be reading at Sarah Lawrence. It was quite a long drive from Philadelphia, but we set off and after some long hours arrived at Sarah Lawrence, only to find that Galway was going to be even a few hours later because his car had broken down on the NJ turnpike.

We waited of course, Galway arrived, and set off on his reading. He read as I recall portions of his stunning poem “That Avenue Bearing the Initial of Christ into the New World.” I hadn’t yet read the poem and I try now to imagine what it would have been like for the shy, tentative, at best half educated young seeker I was.

Here’s how “The Avenue” poem begins:

pcheek pcheek pcheek pcheek pcheek
They cry. The motherbirds thieve the air
To appease them. A tug on the East River
Blasts the bass-note of its passage, lifted
From the infra-bass of the sea. A broom
Swishes over the sidewalk like feet through leaves.
Valerio’s pushcart Ice Coal Kerosene
Moves clack
clack
clack
On a broken wheelrim. Ringing in its chains
The New Star Laundry horse comes down the street
Like a roofleak whucking into a pail.
At the redlight, where a horn blares,
The Golden Harvest Bakery Brakes on its gears,
Squeaks, and seethes in place. A propane-
gassed bus makes its way with big airy sighs..

Across the street a woman throws open
Her Window.
She sets, terribly softly,
Two potted plants on the windowledge
tic tic
And bangs shut her window.

Just that far into the poem, you knew you were hearing a voice you’d never before heard, a music that had never been put together in that suddenly now absolute essential way…

The poem is thirteen sections long, a song to New York City, and a memorial to the Holocaust; I know Galway read only sections of it that day at Sarah Lawrence, most of which I can’t recall, except one, which seems to have immediately become part of our cultural horror-heritage, and I find impossible not to remember.

A child lies in the flames.
It was not the plan. Abraham
Stood in terror at the duplicity,
Isaac whom he loved lay in the flames.
The Lord turned away washing
His hands without soap and water
Like a common housefly.

Just imagine taking all that in when you’re still young, still bumbling around in poetry, trying to find a place for yourself, and here is a poetic place, a poetic realm you couldn’t have conceived. I still remember there was a question and answer period, and Galway’s ironical response to one question about poetic craft was that the whole business of composing poetry was grounded in confidence, about 95 per cent I think he said. Confidence? After all the astounding, daunting poems we’d just had poured into us? I’ve probably asked myself a thousand times in my writing life when the hell exactly was that confidence Galway had let us in on that long ago afternoon going to find me?

I'll stop there, only to add that Galway’s poems never stopped astonishing, from that Avenue C poem written so long ago, to all the many great poems after it, political poems, exquisitely observed nature poems, tender, whimsical, magical poems to his children, Maud and Fergus, and intimate, poignant, sexy, sometimes outright funny, poems to his beloved wife Bobbie.