I was introduced to "The Book of Nightmares" many years ago in a modern poetry class. It was, and continues to be, a source of comfort and inspiration in my life, while other poetry from that period is forgotten. Through sheer beauty and force of language, nothing even comes close to it. Buy this and read it--it will enrich your life tremendously as only a book of truly great animus and spirituality can.

Let me just say it straight out -- if you're interested in contemporary poetry, you oughta read, assimilate, live with this book. Galway Kinnell is a peerless master (now in his 70s and writing perhaps more beautifully than ever), and The Book of Nightmares is simply the most astonishing book-length poem created during the past 50 years of writing in English.

That's a strong statement, maybe a little over my head (since I haven't read every volume of poetry published since 1950), but I've read quite a bit, and I know many poets and lovers of poetry who feel as strongly as I do about this work.

Sounds gruesome -- The Book of Nightmares -- and it's true; Kinnell brings into this work the horror, anguish, brutality of 20th century history. Fierce imagery. Published in the early 70s, Nightmares reflects the social torment of the 60s -- the movement against the Vietnam war and the civil rights movement. Kinnell was a poet-activist against the war, and before that a field worker for the Congress of Racial Equality in the south, where he spent time in jail. His poetic recollection in Nightmares of a southern sheriff who booked and fingerprinted him is one of many remarkable moments, where precisely rendered physical detail resonates far beyond itself.

A howl against the depravities of social injustice -- Nightmares is that and, at the same time even more, it is personal lyric poetry of aching beauty. It's hard to imagine any poet of any time writing a more lovely, tender poem father-to-daughter than "Little Sleep's Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight," part VII of the ten-part architecture of this book.

The sense of coherence Kinnell creates from such a vastly disparate assemblage of materials, bringing it together in an almost demented, hallucinatory stew, is a marvel of craft. Images and ideas interweave throughout, like a musical theme and variations. The coherence, which can seem incoherent to a careless or inexperienced reader, is achieved through fierce intensity of voice, which ! works like a poetic super glue welding into the same amazing long poem: childbirth, a black bear tramping around a campfire in the rain, the frenzied death dance of a beheaded hen, a love affair in Iowa, Plato's concept of divided souls, the Holocaust, a Bach violin recital, the number 10, hair on the poet's back, fleas.

Along with Ginsberg's "Howl", Kinnell carries Whitman forward and delivers him into the late 20th c. alive and kicking, and Nightmares is the work for Kinnell (who began in the 50s as a formalist in the style of Frost) where the long Whitmanic line takes off and soars.

Enough. Kinnell wrote this book for his children, Maud and Fergus, and even if it is The Book of Nightmares it's poetry of rarely achieved love and beauty.

-- Michael Schneider

This volume is really superb. The translations are of consistently high quality. I particularly enjoyed Jerome Rothenberg's "Suites." Too bad this book is out of print!

When I first came across this book in my library I was so smitten with it I tried to gulp it all down in one swallow. As a poet myself, though, I am still eating and enjoying every bite. Burdened by the beauty of his metaphors it has been a challenge to read him without weeping. Though my only famil- iarity with him is through the translations in this volume, I am Latin enough to feel the intense passion, sorrow and melancholy he seems to have been possessed of in his lifetime. His struggle with himself, his love for his country and its ancient symbolism, his devotion to the Old Songs, his sadness at the death of a friend who was a Bullfgihter, his generous respect for the Gypsies, are all painted with the deep colors of language ... sometimes sweet, sometimes tongue-in-cheek humerous sometimes sardonic, sometimes satirical ... even ironical. But there is a mysticism that illuminates it all ... even his sorrow shines. He is a true wanderer ... he roams his! own world and ours and leaves us all mystified, a little confused, and wondering.. What is his "green" ... what does it, can it, truly, signify? Will anyone ever know? This volume is an accumulation of poems that demonstrates a rare and prodigious talent. His assassination at the hands of his enemies deprives us of more of his great work. This is a luminour opus! It is a shame it is out of print. Every poet, every wanna-be-poet, should read and re-read this book!

Galway Kinnell is a poet for all seasons. His voice is full bodied, in touch with the real world, and his vision is compelling. He deals with love and death and the glories of the natural world with crafty and beautiful language. No other American poet of his time has dealt so fully with the world of living creatures in a way that celebrates them without sentiment. His A NEW SELECTED POEMS allows us to sample the best of a lifetime of poetic output and is must reading for those who want to sample the best of contemporary American Poetry. Kinnell is one of our poetic giants and he deals with all that life, love and death, and the glorious and astounding natural world have to offer. You will feel better and less alone after sharing his thoughts and experiences. Daniela Gioseffi, American Book Award winning poet/editor/novelist.

One of Kinnell's greatest poems, from his 1985 volume The Past, is "The Road Between There and Here". In that, the poet travels a familiar road, remembering all that has happened "here", for instance: "Here the local fortune teller took my hand and said 'what is still/ possible is inspired work, faithfulness to a few, and a last love,/ which, being last, will be like looking up and seeing the/ parachute opening up in a shower of gold." That's near the end of the road, of course, after literature, first love, children,contemplation,frogs, speckled eggs, piglets,and Handel are recalled. Reading Kinnell's A New Selected Poems (his last selections were published in 1982)is like traveling the life road with him between there and here, stopping to watch him as he ages from a young poet with attention to form and intellectual pursuits, to a feeling poet -- a nature eulogist and family man --, to a seeker of self in his late middle age, and finally in his latest poems from Imperfect Thirst, into a quiet and nearly sentimental muser. There are no new poems here, but the poet's full,long and deeply lived life, presented and arranged here with an old man's sense of patterns and wisdom, is well worth a return to familiar poems in this new context. I think this volume should be read from start to finish without pause, unlike most poetry books -- the real beauty here is feeling Kinnell's life and insights blossom, flourish and settle. As for the individual poems: there is vigor and attention to language and ideas in his early work, but I find the poems from his middle volumes most moving. The Book of Nightmares may be Kinnell's master work, but I love even more the succinct, prayerful poems of Mortal Acts, Mortal Words. These poems combine his bond with the natural world with his own losses and desires surely,with precision and courage, not the sentiment of later poems. This sureness fuels the poems of When One Has Lived A Long Time Alone, as he sheds life previously lived and starts anew. Reading the whole selection may actually improve the effect of the poems from Imperfect Thirst, which in that volume seemed to me rambling ,disappointingly prosey, a little too sweet. Now, I see the grace of age, letting go of rigors and concepts and form and loving simplicity, and answering the call to rush onto the page before the poet arrives at the end of road,"all used up, that's it." A moving volume that left me somehow loving my own life more,--could the hardest parts have been the best after all? Kinnell convinced me, the road is worth every mile.

It's been many years since I read Galway Kinnell's "Black Light", yet it remains as vivid to me as if I'd finished it yesterday. "Black Light" is a hidden gem--the author is rightfully known most for his poetry--and one I'd recommend unequivocably to any reader with a taste for the bizarre, the exotic, the sensual, and the ironic. "Black Light" is, indeed, "black"; it's a tragic, disturbing little novel set in pre-revolutionary Iran which depicts the struggle between rigid tradition and the call for freedom. It's a story of a hapless father and a beautiful daughter, a story of rural staunchness and urban decadence. Well-worth the time, and well-worth the few bucks. I promise that you won't easily forget it. I love Kinnell's poetry, especially the poems in "Body Rags", but "Black Light" makes me wish he had written more fiction, too.

With all respect to "TTaylor" in the other review, "The Past" is hardly an earlier work, as Kinnell was near 60 when he wrote it. I am not sure these books belong together, but I believe "The Past" to be at least as good as Kinnell's most famous book, "The Book of Nightmares." I also think, like the latter, it's his most consistent book. And, in my opinion, it is a mature work. His work since has been mixed with occasional masterpieces, which is quite allowable for a poet (not every poem must be a masterpiece). Still, I enjoy the consistency of "The Past" over the 90's poems which so often seem to be following Sharon Olds' prosaic confessionalism too closely. In any case, do not limit yourself to "Nightmares" or "Selected Poetry." This book is one of the finest in late 20th century American poetry.

Galway Kinnell's poetry exudes the confidence of a master poet and his words drip with meaning. These are poems which you can sink your teeth into, reveling in their introspection and beauty. Kinnell is one of the most influential poets of this generation and continues to produce a substantial bulk of work. As a wannabe poet myself, I read the poetry in a very envious manner. The ability to produce images and meaning in the way Kinnell does, denotes a certain amount of power I hope to possess. The 3 books in question are earlier works which established Mr. Kinnell as a "well-known" poet. The compilation effectively showcases the breadth and depth of his power. You will not be disappointed with this work.

I have always found Villon to be one of the most overlooked poets in history. In fact, it is likely that the casual reader would have heard only one line of his: "But where are the snows of yester-year?" There is more to Villon, however, than that. I have yet to decide if his life or his writings is more interesting. Breaking many rules of poetry, such as in "III - Ballade (of Small Talk)" in which all but one line starts with "I know," Villon broke as many rules in life. In 1455 he killed a priest and fled the country, where he was charged in multiple robberies, imprisoned, and condemned to be hanged. Mostly because the charges of murder were dropped in the name of self-defense, he was merely banished, whereafter history never sees him again. His way of living was his way of writing: he held nothing back. This earned him the title of "the Vagabond King," while inspiring such lines as "I know all, save myself." The lines I find most striking are from "The Testament" in which Villon is looking for "those laughing comrades that I was with in former days," only to find that "Some are dead and stiff--/nothing now remains of them;/may they find peace in Paradise,/and may God save the rest."

Kinnell is a good poet, but his translations do not exceed those that have preceded him - Mitchell, Snow, Young, Bly, Franz Wright. He lets the German dictate to him too much and doesn't assert his own poetic talent to the degree that we might have expected. A lackluster performance.

Kinnell and Liebmann's translations are spare and honest, hewing closely to the German and intelligently handling the less easily translatable passages, of which there are many. This volume brings you closer to Rilke's original thought than others, such as Mitchell, whose tone at times might be closer to Rilke's but who strays too far from Rilke's actual words. I only wish they'd translated more of the poems!

I thoroughly disagree with the reader from Pennsylvania. I can read German -- in fact, I teach German language and literature at the university level -- and I find not only that Kinnell does full justice to Rilke's language and imagery, but also that his translation itself constitutes excellent, readable poetry.

I stole this book from my local Chapters and when I got home was greatly disappointed. I took it upon myself to return it to the store, I just didn't want this piece of garbage cramping my style. Kinnell is up to his usual hijinks, talking about the ins and outs of Life and Love in our time, but this one lacks the charm of his earlier works. I haven't read his earlier works, by the way, but they can't be as bad as this.

In this, Kinnell's 10th book of poetry, one could either bemoan the book's unevenness or be dazzled by its range; I'd recommend the latter. By turns humorous, erotic, and melancholy, Kinnell here explores many of the themes that have consumed him over his 40+ years of writing -- but in a style that is less taut, less compressed. Long compared to Whitman for the rolling electricity of his language, Kinnell also shares many of his forefather's concerns: "How could anyone/willingly leave a world where they touch you/all over your body?" Kinnell writes, and he seems genuinely perplexed.

At times there's a prosier voice here than those familiar with his Selected Poems or his Book of Nightmares would expect; when in "The Cat" he surreally details the exploits of a feline saboteur ("when the cat is around something goes wrong"), for example, or, in "Oatmeal," muses on the benefits of eating porridge with imaginary partners, one is reminded of the narrative-propelled poems of Stephen Dobyns, the wry humor of Billy Collins....

But Kinnell's project has always been a bit more ambitious than those of the aforementioned, and there are poems in here that will simply stun you. The title poem itself is among Kinnell's best writing ever, and to read the 11-part poem aloud, and straight through, well it'll have your head ringing like a prayer bowl.