Pulitzer Prize winner lends voice to American poetry

Author: Patrick D'Arcy

Middlebury students gathered at nightfall in Mead Chapel on October 17th for a reading from Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Galway Kinnell as part of the College's Annual Clifford Symposium. In keeping with this year's theme of memory and place, Kinnell gave a reading of some of his own work, as well as a smattering of poems by some of his fellow poets to the two-thirds full, quaintly lit chapel.

Once a faculty member at Middlebury's Bread Loaf School of English, Kinnell, 81, won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in 1982 for his "Selected Poems." More recently, this past April he has published another collection of poems, "Strong Is Your Hold." Introducing Kinnell's poetry was D. E. Axinn Professor of English & Creative Writing Jay Parini, who emphasized how the influential writer's work presents the "possibilities of spirit in a dark time," urging readers to "pass through the physical world to make contact with the spiritual." Parini named some of Kinnell's influences as Walt Whitman and Robert Frost before noting his involvement in the Civil Rights Movement as well as his role as a social activist. A long poem published in 1973, "The Book of Nightmares" was written in protest of the Vietnam War.

In his deep, rumbling voice, Kinnell began the evening by reading "Here," a poem by recently deceased friend and fellow poet Grace Paley. He also read "The Same Again" by Patrick Kavanagh, "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" by William Butler Yeats, "I heard a Fly buzz" by Emily Dickinson, "The Cows at Night" by Hayden Carruth and "To Autumn" by John Keats, which he called the "most beautiful poem in the English language." Of his own work he read "Wait," "Oatmeal" and "The Deconstruction of Emily Dickinson," among others. His own poems were often accompanied by small anecdotes telling of their origins. "Wait," for instance, was written for a former student of his contemplating suicide. "Wait, for now," Kinnell writes in the poem, "distrust everything, if you have to. / But trust the hours. Haven't they / carried you everywhere, up to now?" His poem "Oatmeal" was conceived at an artists' retreat when a painter was startled by the prospect that Kinnell was in the habit of eating his breakfast oatmeal alone. "That is why I often think up an imaginary companion to have breakfast with," Kinnell writes. "Possibly it is even worse to eat oatmeal with an imaginary companion."

"Galway has been a regular to Middlebury over the years," Parini said. "I think he first read in Mead Chapel over twenty years ago. But it's always a pleasure to welcome a wonderful poet to our campus, and I personally love his poetry…I've gotten so many lovely comments from people who were there. I think that poetry is alive and well at Middlebury."

At one point in the reading, Kinnell turned to Parini from the podium and admitted he had forgotten to note the time he had begun the reading.

"When should I stop?" he asked. If the standing ovation that concluded the evening was any indication, the hour-long reading was much too short.