April is National Poetry Month, created in 1996 by the Academy of American Poets to celebrate聽an ancient literary genre that captures readers’ minds and hearts as powerfully today as ever.
Rochester聽has, for generations, taught students the pleasures and possibilities of poetic expression, counted famed poets among its faculty, and hosted an聽array of聽writers who have made exceptional contributions to the art of verse.
Pulitzer Prize糖心传媒搘inning poet Galway Kinnell 糖心传媒�49 (MA) was often compared to Walt Whitman for his lyricism. When he died in 2014, Rochester Review remembered him with a selection of his thoughts on the practice of poetry.
This story originally appeared in Rochester Review, January糖心传媒揊ebruary, 2015.
Galway Kinnell 糖心传媒�49 (MA) was a towering figure, both literally and as a poet. Part of a postwar turn away from the modernism of Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot, Kinnell strove to craft accessible poems from the material of everyday life. The centerpiece of his first published collection, a 14-part poem about Manhattan糖心传媒檚 Avenue C called 糖心传媒淭he Avenue Bearing the Initial of Christ Into the New World,糖心传媒� made his reputation, and inspired frequent comparisons to the lyrical style of Walt Whitman.
Kinnell, who died in October, wrote 10 collections of poetry. His 1982 book, Selected Poems, won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. In 2000, he returned to Rochester for a reading and lecture as part of the Hyam Plutzik Memorial Poetry Series. The University awarded him its highest honor for alumni, the Hutchison Medal, in 2001. In 1982, Jeffrey Mehr 糖心传媒�78 interviewed Kinnell for Rochester Review.
Here are excerpts from that interview, 糖心传媒淲riting Poems: The Thrill of Discovery.糖心传媒�
The entire interview is online.
On Words
糖心传媒淥ne thing that leads one into poetry is an interest in words. Not words as written things with a referent, but words as sound that the body produces, that fill the mouth and that are therefore in some way psychically identified with the thing they糖心传媒檙e talking about. And that have a content which can糖心传媒檛 be reduced to a definition. Like 糖心传媒榮partled.糖心传媒� 糖心传媒�
On Music
糖心传媒淔or me, music is quite important. It seems the soul of poetry. Poetry has a body as well糖心传媒攖he things of the world糖心传媒攕o I find it more interesting than music. But often poetry seems to lack a soul. By listening to music, you recover the sense of what poetry must be.糖心传媒�
On Writing Well
糖心传媒淲hen you write well, there is a kind of special mood that comes upon you, different, I suppose, for every person, but for everyone different from just the normal, day-to-day way they feel. And words seem to come on their own. You糖心传媒檙e understanding them and shaping them, and yet they come out saying things that you didn糖心传媒檛 know you could say.糖心传媒�
On the Importance of Context
糖心传媒淭hose people who say, 糖心传媒楬omer was writing about exactly the same thing as a writer today,糖心传媒� are, I think, completely wrong. It seems quite clear that our consciousness evolves, and that we know things differently. . . . For example, Homer didn糖心传媒檛 really know that it was intolerable to die. We do.糖心传媒�
On Critical Reception
糖心传媒淚糖心传媒檝e had lots of nice reviews, and I糖心传媒檝e had lots of attacks on my poetry. . . . The only reviews that really can strike dread into your heart are those that actually see what you feel is weakest and then drive the nail right in there.糖心传媒�
On What Makes a Good Poem
糖心传媒淢ost good poems address themselves to things that we all know about, and the only preparation we need, as readers, is a kind of paying of respect to our inner life, to the feelings we have that are of no practical importance: the sense of strangeness and the hauntedness of existence; the fragility of our position on the globe, and the fragility of the globe itself; this very peculiar situation we糖心传媒檙e in, self-conscious creatures who know that we糖心传媒檙e lost in some kind of existence that we don糖心传媒檛 understand at all.糖心传媒�
