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franfernandezarce's review against another edition
2.0
*2.5*
this collection of poetry felt like a word perpetually stuck at the tipof my tongue. i could feel it; i could sense around it; sometimes, even briefly, i could savour it. but in the end, i couldn't grasp it, couldn't really connect its underlying structure as if my mind kept being entertained by the sliver of an intriguing verse only for it to disappear into a mungle, strange background.
i don't think i will be reading more collections from this author. so many writers to read, so little time to waste on people who are just not my cup of tea
this collection of poetry felt like a word perpetually stuck at the tipof my tongue. i could feel it; i could sense around it; sometimes, even briefly, i could savour it. but in the end, i couldn't grasp it, couldn't really connect its underlying structure as if my mind kept being entertained by the sliver of an intriguing verse only for it to disappear into a mungle, strange background.
i don't think i will be reading more collections from this author. so many writers to read, so little time to waste on people who are just not my cup of tea
booksugarhigh's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
relaxing
medium-paced
3.0
“No matter, now, whom it was built for, it keeps its flames, it warms everyone who might wander into its radiance, a tree, a lost animal, the stones, because in the dying world it was set burning.”
Delightful read, though there are some weird race mentions I don’t know if they’re supposed to be read as a negative or a positive way, it was beautiful all things set aside.
cascadingcause's review against another edition
5.0
Great ending to 2020. With four minutes to spare.
sam_is_wrong's review against another edition
5.0
look, i don't know shit about poetry but wow this was gorgeous
kfan's review against another edition
5.0
I guess I never mentioned it here, so I'll just note, in case you need the info, that close to 10 years after I first read it, this continues to be my favorite book of all time, the book that I would carry around with me at all times, if I was a person who did things like that.
The wages of dying is love.
The wages of dying is love.
seules's review against another edition
5.0
i cant believe kinnell went into my home robbed me of all my possessions and told me to choke :/
dan1066's review against another edition
4.0
When it was cold
on our hillside, and you cried
in the crib rocking
through the darkness, on wood
knifed down to the curve of the smile, a sadness
stranger than ours, all of it
flowing from the other world,
I used to come to you
and sit by you
and sing to you.
”Under the Maud Moon”
Many fathers experience the nightmare Kinnell explores in this 10-chapter poem: Birth is the beginning of the end. Everyone we meet, especially our beloved daughters and sons, are dying as soon as they emerge crying. If that seems trite or uninteresting, don’t bother. If, like me, you felt the chill shadow of mortality when you first held a son or daughter, this poem is for you. This poem depicts the thin line between sanity and insanity, between living and dying, between community and emptiness. It’s truly The Book of Nightmares.
Be warned: Kinnell dismantles the support of the Christian church as well as New Age beliefs in his narrative. Without a God-given plan or purpose, Kinnell’s narrative is bleaker, emptier. For me, it made the nightmare worse. Everyone is born to die. What do we do when faced with that irrefutable fact? Kinnell’s narrator slips through the poem searching and questioning, and while there’s faint glimmers of hope, it’s difficult to discern in the dark wanderings.
In the end, Kinnell’s book is oddly satisfying. Kinnell is asking questions for which no philosopher has provided soul-reassuring answers in thousands of years of thinking, questions we should clearly understand and ponder deeply. With these questions guiding us, we are better prepared for the inevitable tragedies fate has prepared for us:
We who live out our plain lives, who put
our hand into the hand of whatever we love
as it vanishes,
as we vanish,
and stumble toward what will be, simply by arriving,
a kind of fate…
”The Call Across the Valley of Not-Knowing”
on our hillside, and you cried
in the crib rocking
through the darkness, on wood
knifed down to the curve of the smile, a sadness
stranger than ours, all of it
flowing from the other world,
I used to come to you
and sit by you
and sing to you.
”Under the Maud Moon”
Many fathers experience the nightmare Kinnell explores in this 10-chapter poem: Birth is the beginning of the end. Everyone we meet, especially our beloved daughters and sons, are dying as soon as they emerge crying. If that seems trite or uninteresting, don’t bother. If, like me, you felt the chill shadow of mortality when you first held a son or daughter, this poem is for you. This poem depicts the thin line between sanity and insanity, between living and dying, between community and emptiness. It’s truly The Book of Nightmares.
Be warned: Kinnell dismantles the support of the Christian church as well as New Age beliefs in his narrative. Without a God-given plan or purpose, Kinnell’s narrative is bleaker, emptier. For me, it made the nightmare worse. Everyone is born to die. What do we do when faced with that irrefutable fact? Kinnell’s narrator slips through the poem searching and questioning, and while there’s faint glimmers of hope, it’s difficult to discern in the dark wanderings.
In the end, Kinnell’s book is oddly satisfying. Kinnell is asking questions for which no philosopher has provided soul-reassuring answers in thousands of years of thinking, questions we should clearly understand and ponder deeply. With these questions guiding us, we are better prepared for the inevitable tragedies fate has prepared for us:
We who live out our plain lives, who put
our hand into the hand of whatever we love
as it vanishes,
as we vanish,
and stumble toward what will be, simply by arriving,
a kind of fate…
”The Call Across the Valley of Not-Knowing”
robk's review against another edition
5.0
Being somewhat familiar with Galway Kinnell, but having only read a few isolated poems in anthologies, I was unprepared for the power of this collection. The Book of Nightmares is a dreamlike meandering through fears both real and imaginary. With the fragmented logic of dreams, Kinnell encounters horrors in the ordinary and extraordinary. Things only somewhat make sense, and the impressions created pierce the soul. But this is not merely a book of horrors. Kinnell imbues the poems with love--there is hope within the nightmare, but this hope is fleeting, and must be grasped tight. My favorite lines, though there were many beautiful lines, were these, spoken by a father to his child:
Ultimately, we cannot escape the nightmares that surround us--the trauma, the doubt, anxiety, and fear; most pronounced the impending death that awaits us--but, as Kinnell writes"
You scream, waking from a nightmare.
When I sleepwalk
into your room, and pick you up,
and hold you up in the moonlight, you cling to me
hard,
as if clinging could save us. I think
you think
I will never die, I think I exude
to you the permanence of smoke or stars,
even as
my broken arms heal themselves around you.
Ultimately, we cannot escape the nightmares that surround us--the trauma, the doubt, anxiety, and fear; most pronounced the impending death that awaits us--but, as Kinnell writes"
we will walk out among
the ten thousand things,
each scratched too late with the knowledge, the wages
of dying is love.
chelsea_rae's review
5.0
i think maybe reading these poems while back home in rhode island was cheating a little, because a) kinnell was born in providence and grew up in pawtucket, and b) i'm in the middle of some semi-existential family realizations, and the book is about kinnell's family and about how we live, in small moments, with the awareness that everything around us (including ourselves and the people we love most) is destined to leave. the poems feel wide-open and spacious, but also simultaneously raw and visceral, in a literal sense- the images are often ugly and unforgiving. one article i read described them as "unlovely."
anyway i realize that these reviews make it sound like i cry every time i read a book but listen, i cried over "under the maud moon" in public, in a coffee shop in providence, and i'm not sorry about it. i think i'm going to try body rags next.
anyway i realize that these reviews make it sound like i cry every time i read a book but listen, i cried over "under the maud moon" in public, in a coffee shop in providence, and i'm not sorry about it. i think i'm going to try body rags next.