Three Books: Body Rags; Mortal Acts, Mortal Words; The Past

by Galway Kinnell

Overview

This volume brings together BODY RAGS and MORTAL ACTS, MORTAL WORDS and THE PAST, three books that are central to the life’s work of one of the masters of contemporary poetry. Included here are many of Galway Kinnell’s best-loved and most anthologized poems. Kinnell has revised some of the poems for this new edition, and comments on his working method in a prefatory note.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780618219117
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	04/17/2002
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	544,388
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

GALWAY KINNELL (1927–2014) was a MacArthur Fellow and state poet of Vermont. In 1982 his Selected Poems won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. For many years he was the Erich Maria Remarque Professor of Creative Writing at New York University, as well as a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. For thirty-five years—from The Book of Nightmares to Mortal Acts and, most recently, Strong Is Your Hold—Galway Kinnell enriched American poetry, not only with his poems but also with his teaching and powerful public readings.

Read an Excerpt

The Olive Wood Fire

When Fergus woke crying at night, I would carry him from his crib to the rocking chair and sit holding him before the fire of thousand-year-old olive wood.
Sometimes, for reasons I never knew and he has forgotten, even after his bottle the big tears would keep on rolling down his big cheeks —the left cheek always more brilliant than the right— and we would sit, some nights for hours, rocking in the light eking itself out of the ancient wood, and hold each other against the darkness, his close behind and far away in the future, mine I imagined all around.
One such time, fallen half-asleep myself, I thought I heard a scream —a flier crying out in horror as he dropped fire on he didn’t know what or whom, or else a child thus set aflame— and sat up alert. The olive wood fire had burned low. In my arms lay Fergus, fast asleep, left cheek glowing, God.

Three Books: Copyright © 1993, 2002 by Galway Kinnell Mortal Acts, Mortal Words: Copyright © 1980 by Galway Kinnell Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company.

Table of Contents

CONTENTS

Author’s Note vii

BODY RAGS

I

Another Night in the Ruins 5 Lost Loves 8 Getting the Mail 9 Vapor Trail Reflected in the Frog Pond 10 The Fossils 12 The Burn 14 One Who Used to Beat His Way 16 The Fly 17 The Falls 18 Mango 19 In the Anse Galet Valley 20 La Bagarcde 21 Night in the Forest 22 Going Home by Last Light 23 How Many Nights 25 Last Songs 26 In the Farmhouse 27 The Correspondence School Instructor Says Goodbye to His Poetry Students 28 The Poem 30

II

The Last River 35

III

Testament of the Thief 57 The Porcupine 62 The Bear 67

MORTAL ACTS, MORTAL WORDS

I

Fergus Falling 75 After Making Love We Hear Footsteps 77 Angling, a Day 78 Saint Francis and the Sow 81 The Choir 82 Two Set Out on Their Journey 83 Brother of My Heart 84 Fisherman 85 Wait 87

II

Daybreak 91 The Gray Heron 92 In the Bamboo Hut 93 Lava 94 Blackberry Eating 96 Kissing the Toad 97 Crying 98 Les Invalides 99 On the Tennis Court at Night 100

III

The Sadness of Brothers 105 Goodbye 109 Looking at Your Face 111 The Last Hiding Places of Snow 112 52 Oswald Street 118

IV

The Rainbow 123 The Apple 125 Memory of Wilmington 126 The Still Time 128 There Are Things I Tell to No One 130 Pont Neuf at Nightfall 133 The Apple Tree 135 A Milk Bottle 137 Flying Home 139

THE PAST

I

The Road Between Here and There 147 The Angel 149 Middle of the Night 150 Conception 151 The Sow Piglet’s Escapes 152 The Olive Wood Fire 153 Milk 154 Lake Memphremagog 155 The Man Splitting Wood in the Daybreak 156 The Frog Pond 157 The Old Life 159

II

Prayer 163 The Ferry Stopping at MacMahon’s Point 164 Mount Fuji at Daybreak 165 Break of Day 166 Farm Picture 167 Some Song 168 Coinaliste 169 Driftwood from a Ship 170 Fire in Luna Park 171 The Geese 172 The Shroud 173

III

Chamberlain’s Porch 177 Cemetery Angels 178 December Day in Honolulu 179 On the Oregon Coast 180 Last Holy Fragrance 182 The Past 186 First Day of the Future 189 The Fundamental Project of Technology 190 The Waking 192 That Silent Evening 195 The Seekonk Woods 197

Acknowledgments 203 Index 205

Editorial Reviews

The reissue of three books from the wide-ranging Kinnell, published in 1968, 1989, and 1985, respectively. Add to his two classics: The Book of Nightmares (1973) and The Avenue Bearing the Initial of Christ into the New World (1974).

Library Journal