A review by casparb
Strong Is Your Hold by Galway Kinnell

whitmanian piece, lucking into the vermont-y amber as the cover suggests. Bears an small children and foxes and the like run through the bushes. Actually some of the best work in here is about Galway's youngins. BUt mostly I'm captivated by his LINE, how committed to ending each of them he is & how unlike our pretence to being forward thinking. the poem 'Everyone Was In Love' is really unbelievable & gets you to hold yr breath three lines in. a 9/11 elegy-poem, 'When the Towers Fell' is fragmentary (as is his way, one of those fellas that works in wonky stanzas, no regular lines) & drops into polish, french , german. I like that I didn't know the german was Celan , and got to just assume it was a heavy drinking person , an enthusiast. Was I supposed to have recognised the quotation? I like it better this way