Galway Kinnell's books of poetry include What a Kingdom
It Was, Flower Herding on Mount Monadnock, Body Rags, The Book
of Nightmares, and The Avenue Bearing the Initial of Christ
into the New World.
He's well known for his translations
of Francois Villon, Yves Bonnefoy and Yvon Goll.
When I went to work for the Poetry Center in 1970,
Mr. Kinnell was our first visitor,
and I was very nervous and very frightened.
All day he kept coming into the office with manuscript pages,
and Phyllis Gibbs was typing, and then
he'd come back in with the same page of few minutes
later all full of marks, and Phyllis would type it again.
This went on all day.
He was reading that evening from The Book of Nightmares,
still in manuscript.
Something went wrong, we didn't get a tape recording.
I was so nervous that after I introduced Mr. Kinnell
and went backstage to shake, I heard
the lovely music of his voice, but I hadn't the vaguest idea
of what he said.
So it's a great pleasure for me to be able to hear him tonight.
Mr. Galway Kinnell.
[APPLAUSE]