Collected Poems

The essential collection by the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winner who was “one of the true master poets of his generation” (The New York Times).

In the words of Galway Kinnell, it is “the poet’s job to figure out what’s happening within oneself, to figure out the connection between the self and the world, and to get it down in words that have a lasting shape, that have a chance of lasting.” With this deeply probing and restlessly curious sensibility, Kinnell spend decades producing some of American poetry’s most beloved and revered works.

This comprehensive volume includes Kinnell’s expansive poem of immigrant life on the Lower East Side of New York, “The Avenue Bearing the Initial of Christ into the New World,”; his incantatory book-length poem, The Book of Nightmares; and a searing evocation of Hiroshima in “The Fundamental Project of Technology.” It covers the iconic themes of Kinnell’s middle years—eros, family, and the natural world—in works such as “After Making Love We Hear Footsteps,” “The Bear,” “Saint Francis and the Sow,” and “Blackberry Eating.” And includes the unflinchingly introspective work of his later years.

Spanning six decades, this is the essential collection for old and new devotees of Galway Kinnell: “a poet of the rarest ability…who can flesh out music, raise the spirits, and break the heart” (Boston Globe).