Galway Kinnell Quotes

Sometimes it is necessary To reteach a thing its loveliness

I love to go out in late September among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries to eat blackberries for breakfast, the stalks very prickly, a penalty they earn for knowing the black art of blackberry-making; and as I stand among them lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries fall almost unbidden to my tongue, as words sometimes do, certain peculiar words like strengths or squinched, many-lettered, one-syllabled lumps, which I squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well in the silent, startled, icy, black language of blackberry – eating in late September.

Turn on the dream you lived through the unwavering gaze. It is as you thought: the living burn. In the floating days may you discover grace.

Kiss the mouth which tells you, here, here is the world. This mouth. This laughter. These temple bones.

The first step… shall be to lose the way.

There are two versions to every poem – the crying version and the straight version

Goodbye,you who are, for me, the postmarks againof shattered towns–Xenia, Burnt Cabins,Hornell–their lonelinessgiven away in poems, only their solitude kept.

The budstands for all things,even for those things that don’t flower

Thats the way it is with poetry: When it is incomprehensible it seems profound, and when you understand it, it is only ridiculous.

I start off but I don’t know where I’m going; I try this avenue and that avenue, that turns out to be a dead end, this is a dead end, and so on. The search takes a long time and I have to back-track often.

The first step in the journey is to lose your way.

Prose is walking; poetry is flying