Galway Kinnell Quotes

• 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.

  Galway Kinnell

  Inspirational, Flower, Blessing

  Galway Kinnell (2016). “Three Books”, p.95, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  65 Copy quote

• Go so deep into yourself, you speak for everyone.

  Galway Kinnell

  Speak

  37 Copy quote

• The first step in the journey is to lose your way.

  Galway Kinnell

  Journey, Way, Firsts

  27 Copy quote

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

  Galway Kinnell

  Falling In Love, Self, Mind

  Galway Kinnell (1973). “The Book of Nightmares”, p.31, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  35 Copy quote

• 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

  Galway Kinnell

  Earth, Littles, Speak

  28 Copy quote

• I will find that special person who is wrong for me in just the right way.

  Galway Kinnell

  Special, Way, Wrong Person

  35 Copy quote

• Sometimes it is necessary To reteach a thing its loveliness

  Galway Kinnell

  Sometimes, Loveliness

  Galway Kinnell (2016). “Three Books”, p.95, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  24 Copy quote

• 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.

  Galway Kinnell

  Dream, Grace, Floating

  Galway Kinnell (1960). “What a kingdom it was”

  27 Copy quote

• I have always intended to live forever; but not until now, to live now.

  Galway Kinnell

  Forever, Live Forever

  Galway Kinnell (2016). “Three Books”, p.214, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  26 Copy quote

• Kiss the mouth
  which tells you,
  here,
  here is the world.
  This mouth. This laughter.
  These temple bones.

  Galway Kinnell

  Laughter, Kissing, World

  Galway Kinnell (2001). “A New Selected Poems”, p.93, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  19 Copy quote

• Prose is walking; poetry is flying

  Galway Kinnell

  Flying, Poetry Is, Prose

  15 Copy quote

• Let our scars fall in love.

  Galway Kinnell

  Falling In Love, Fall, Scar

  Galway Kinnell (1973). “The Book of Nightmares”, p.31, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  21 Copy quote

• 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.

  Galway Kinnell

  Memories, Love Is, Hands

  Galway Kinnell (2001). “A New Selected Poems”, p.95, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  12 Copy quote

• The bud
  stands for all things,
  even for those things that don't flower

  Galway Kinnell

  Flower, Bud, All Things

  Galway Kinnell (2016). “Three Books”, p.95, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  9 Copy quote

• Thats the way it is with poetry: When it is incomprehensible it seems profound, and when you understand it, it is only ridiculous.

  Galway Kinnell

  Profound, Way, Ridiculous

  17 Copy quote

• 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.

  Galway Kinnell

  Stars, Thinking, Broken

  Galway Kinnell (1973). “The Book of Nightmares”, p.49, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  18 Copy quote

• the rest of my days I spend
  wandering: wondering
  what, anyway,
  was that sticky infusion, that rank flavor of blood, that
  poetry, by which I lived?

  Galway Kinnell

  Blood, Poetry, Flavor

  Galway Kinnell (2001). “A New Selected Poems”, p.73, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  13 Copy quote

• Perhaps poetry will be the canary in the mine-shaft warning us of what's to come.

  Galway Kinnell

  Warning, Canaries, Mines

  13 Copy quote

• I love to go out in late September among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries to eat blackberries for breakfast, the stalks very prickly, a penalty they earn for knowing the black art of blackberry-making; and as I stand among them lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries fall almost unbidden to my tongue, as words sometimes do, certain peculiar words like strengths or squinched, many-lettered, one-syllabled lumps, which I squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well in the silent, startled, icy, black language of blackberry - eating in late September.

  Galway Kinnell

  Art, Fall, Knowing

  Galway Kinnell (2001). “A New Selected Poems”, p.97, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  29 Copy quote

• The only sense we still respect is eyesight, probably because it is so closely attached to the brain. Go into any American house at random, you will find something - a plastic flower, false tiles, some imitation something - something which can be appreciated as material only if apprehended by eyesight alone. Don't we go sightseeing in cars, thinking we can experience a landscape by looking at it through glass?

  Galway Kinnell

  Flower, Thinking, Glasses

  9 Copy quote

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

  Galway Kinnell

  Travel, Way, Firsts

  13 Copy quote

• I start off but I don't know where I'm going; I try this avenue and that avenue, that turns out to be a dead end, this is a dead end, and so on. The search takes a long time and I have to back-track often.

  Galway Kinnell

  Long, Track, Trying

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  Galway Kinnell

  Sleep, Hair, Dying

  Galway Kinnell, “Little Sleep's-Head Sprouting Hair In The Moonlight”

  7 Copy quote

• Is there a mechanism of death, that so mutilates existence no one, gets over it not even the dead?

  Galway Kinnell

  Existence, Over It, Get Over

  "When the Towers Fell" by Galway Kinnell, www.newyorker.com. September 16, 2002.

  12 Copy quote

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

  Galway Kinnell

  Two, Cry, Versions

  5 Copy quote

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