Quotes from Galway Kinnell

In the half darkness we look at each otherand smileand touch arms across his little, startlingly muscled body—this one whom habit of memory propels to the ground of his making,sleeper only the mortal sounds can awake,this blessing love gives again into our arms.

That's the way it is with poetry: When it is incomprehensible it seems profound, and when you understand it, it is only ridiculous.

the rest of my days I spendwandering, wonderingwhat, anyway,was that sticky infusion, that rank flavor of blood, that poetry by which I lived?

Let our scars fall in love.

Sometimes it is necessary To reteach a thing its loveliness

The first step ... shall be to lose the way.

To me, poetry is somebody standing up, so to speak, and saying, with as little concealment as possible, what it is for him or her to be on earth at this moment

it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness, to put a hand on its brow of the flower and retell it in words and in touch it is lovely until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing...

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.

Prose is walking; poetry is flying

Never mind. The self is the least of it. Let our scars fall in love

I did care... I did say everything I thought In the mildest words I knew. And now,... I have to say I'm relieved it is over: At the end I could feel only pity For that urge toward more life. ...Goodbye

The bud stands for all things, even for those things that don't flower, for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing; though sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness, to put a hand on its brow of the flower and retell it in words and in touch it is lovely until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing

Little sleep's-head sprouting hair in the moonlight, when I come back we will go out together, we will walk out together among, the ten thousand things, each scratched too late with such knowledge, the wages of dying is love.

Whatever happens. Whatever what is is is what I want. Only that. But that.

Turn on the dream you lived through the unwavering gaze. It is as you thought: the living burn. In the floating days may you discover grace.

There are two versions to every poem – the crying version and the straight version

Second-hand gloves will become lovely again, their memories are what give them the need for other hands. And 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.

The wages of dying are love.

When a group of people get up from a table, the table doesn't know which way any of them will go.

Isn't it worth missing whatever joy / you might have dreamed, to wake in the night and find / you and your beloved are holding hands in your sleep?

The secret title of every good poem might be 'Tenderness

It was more or less late afternoon and I came over a hilltop and smack in front of me was the sunset.

How many nights must it take one such as me to learn that we aren't, after all, made from that bird that flies out of its ashes, that for us as we go up in flames, our one work is to open ourselves, to be the flames?