Status
Available
Genres
Collection
Publication
Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 2006.
Description
Here in paperback is the celebrated eleventh book of poems by Galway Kinnell. The book's title derives from Walt Whitman's "Last Invocation": "Strong is your hold O mortal flesh, / Strong is your hold O love." In this striking collection, Kinnell gives us poems of intermingling with the natural world, love poems and evocations of sexuality, poems about his father, his children, poet friends, poet heroes, and mythic figures. Included also is "When the Towers Fell," his stunning requiem for those who died in the World Trade Center on 9/11.
User reviews
LibraryThing member NielsenGW
This slender book of poems comes with a CD of the author reading all the poems and sometimes giving explanatory notes along the way. While not as outwardly visceral at his earlier Book of Nightmares, his poems are still extraordinary. Reading the book along with listening to the author, one can see
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the evidence of working and re-working the poems, as they are not the same in both formats. This leaves the reader not only to figure out the words on the page, but also to figure out why certain lines were changed or, in some cases, omitted. There are quite a few poems here that deserve a second read, which is about the highest praise one can give a poem. Show Less
Awards
Poetry Book Society Choice and Recommendation (Recommendation — 2007.2)
The New York Times Notable Books of the Year (Fiction & Poetry — 2006)