Book

Kinnell, Galway, 1927-2014, author.

Imperfect thirst / Galway Kinnell.

Boston : Houghton Mifflin Company, 1994.

81 pages ; 24 cm

Galway Kinnell's twelfth collection of poems, Imperfect Thirst, is powerful and thrilling, beautifully crafted and astonishingly candid. In it, Kinnell approaches elemental subjects with a remarkable balance of good nature and holy dread. It includes re-visions of moments of childhood and youth; reflections on the relationship between humans and the other creatures; poems bearing on music, language, sex, mortality; five poems based on the form of the Persian ghazal; love poems; and a tender evocation of a daughter taking care of her old father. Five longer poems close the book: a meditation on the lasting reverberations of childhood trauma; a lively ode to excrement; a disquisition on flies which weaves together the observations of thirteen other poets; a looking back at the past and a child's looking forward; and an elegy for a beloved sister. Imperfect Thirst is a bold, exact, passionate book from a poet at the height of his powers.

American poetry -- 20th century.

Poetry.

Proem. The pen -- My mother's R & R -- Showing my father through freedom -- Hitchhiker -- The man in the chair -- Picnic -- The cellist -- Running on silk -- The deconstruction of Emily dickinson -- The night -- Trees -- Sheffield ghazals -- The biting insects -- Paradise elsewhere -- Collusion of elements -- Driving west -- Passing the cementery -- Parkinson's disease -- Telephoning in Mexican sunlight sunlight -- "The music of poetry" -- Rapture -- The road across skye -- Lackawanna -- Holy shit -- Flies -- The striped snake and the goldfinch -- Neverland.

Contributor biographical information

Publisher description

94027044

0395710898

9780395710890

039575528X

30919757

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811 Kinnell