Kinnell, Galway (Vol. 3) | Kinnell, Galway 1927–
Kinnell, Galway 1927–
Kinnell, a sensitive and imaginative American poet, has written The Book of Nightmares and Body Rags. (See also Contemporary Authors, Vols. 9-12, rev. ed.)
Galway Kinnell's The Book of Nightmares is partly an account of nightmares, partly songs or spells to be sung in time of nightmare, and partly perhaps, on the analogy of old dream books, a guide to interpreting nightmares. One interpretation is suggested in poem VIII: Each of us is a half self. If we are matched, we are mismatched, because we are moved by craving and accident rather than by a perfecting fate. You can see that Kinnell, like Yeats, has altered Plato's parable. But unlike Yeats, he reminds us that Aristophanes told the story at the banquet, and so it is a comic or satiric idea.
Another idea comes out of Kinnell's own myth, the root form of his poems and, like all myth, it can be analyzed but not interpreted. The power and...
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