The Book of Nightmares

A work of ferocious tenderness and macabre imagery of flora and fauna and perpetual bloodied birth. This series of long poems summon urgent images of slow decay and hold no doubt about the fragility of life, a dream easily infested with moribund viscera and strangeness. Kinnell's tone is impeccable and his imagery is consistently piercing. This is a book of nightmares, indeed. It's as beautiful as it is haunted. Even when writing about the birth of his daughter Maude, Kinnell gives us lines like "... the slow / agonizing clenches making / the last molds of her life in the dark" and "... she dies / a moment, turns blue as coal / the limbs shaking / as the memories rush out of them." A standout work of later twentieth century American poetry.

Galway’s Kinnell requires all of you to show up when reading his work. This isn’t a book of poetry you can glance through while watching a TV show. Kinnell commands attention. He scoops up all he sees and boils it into a black mass, alive and writhing. His poetry exists in the space right before you express disgust, before fear and hate have words. Kinnell is like the cat who catches a beast in the woods and drops it at the feet of the reader. It’s tough not be poetic when describing poetry of this magnitude. Kinnell will have a hard time rivaling Whitman and Stevens as American Grandmasters of verse, but he tries. And it shows.

I enjoyed it. But it's not the masterpiece I've heard it was from some. The language wasn't fresh enough in places, the symbolism too heavy-handed, or in places the poem felt too easy, or too dramatic. Sometimes it went back to a very superficial place, a very predictable nightmare of the flesh. But there were lines that I really liked. Like "Let our scars fall in love" and "I have felt the zero/freeze itself around the finger dipped slowly in."

Sheryl St. Germain introduced me to Kinnell . . . I'd have never thought that I'd love the poetry of some old white guy like I love this!

In the old style, and wonderful.