Kinnell, << kih NEHL, >> Galway (1927-2014), an American poet, won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for poetry for his Selected Poems (1982). Kinnell wrote intensely personal poetry in free verse. Themes of death and human mortality dominate his work. Some of Kinnell’s best-known poems deal with animals as the poet relates himself to the experiences of such creatures as a bear, a crow, or a porcupine.
Kinnell’s first collection of verse was What a Kingdom It Was (1960). He gained widespread attention with his third collection, Body Rags (1968), which contains the highly praised poem “The Bear.” The Book of Nightmares (1971) is a long autobiographical poem. His other collections include The Avenue Bearing the Initial of Christ into the New World: Poems 1946-1964 (1974), Mortal Acts, Mortal Words (1980), When One Has Lived a Long Time (1990), Imperfect Thirst (1994), New Selected Poems (2000), and Strong Is Your Hold (2006). His Collected Poems was published in 2017, after his death.
Kinnell earned international praise for his translations from French literature, notably The Poems of Francois Villon (1965, revised edition 1982). He also wrote the novel Black Light (1966, revised edition 1980).
Kinnell was born in Providence, Rhode Island, on Feb. 1, 1927. He received a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University in 1948 and a master’s degree from the University of Rochester in 1949. He spent much of his adult life in academic positions. Kinnell was director of the writing program at New York University from 1981 to 1984 and became a professor at the university in 1985. He died on Oct. 28, 2014.
