51 Quotes by Galway Kinnell

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

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

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

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

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

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

Go so deep into yourself, you speak for everyone.

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