Galway Kinnell turns 80: The Reading
February 1st, 2007 by elliott
“we will walk out together among
the ten thousand things,
each scratched in time with such knowledge…. ”—Galway Kinnell
Thursday, February 1, 7:00pm
The Great Hall at Cooper Union
4 Cooper Square
New York, NY
Admission free
Strong Is Your Hold: An 80th Birthday Tribute to Galway Kinnell
with Robert Bly, E. L. Doctorow, Mark Doty, Cornelius Eady, Edward Hirsch, Marie Howe, Yusef Komunyakaa, Anne Marie Macari, Sharon Olds, Grace Paley, Gerald Stern & C.K. Williams
Friends and fellow writers join the beloved bard Galway Kinnell in a reading that honors his profound impact on generations of poets.
Galway Kinnell’s collections include Strong Is Your Hold and Selected Poems, for which he received both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.
Presented in conjunction with Blue Flower Arts, Cooper Union, Houghton Mifflin, NYU Creative Writing Program and the Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y. Co-sponsored by the Academy of American Poets, Cave Canem, Poetry Society of America and Poets & Writers.
here’s my favorite kinnell poem:
WAIT
Wait, for now.
Distrust everything if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven’t they
carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become interesting.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again;
their memories are what give them
the need for other hands. The desolation
of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness
carved out of such tiny beings as we are
asks to be filled; the need
for the new love is faithfulness to the old.
Wait.
Don’t go too early.
You’re tired. But everyone’s tired.
But no one is tired enough.
Only wait a little and listen:
music of hair,
music of pain,
music of looms weaving our loves again.
Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
most of all to hear your whole existence,
rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.
Comment by lexxx — January 22, 2007 @ 2:42 am