With The Avenue Bearing the Initial of Christ into the New World and The Book of Nightmares we have a clear view of Galway Kinnell's work from the beginning to the present; what's immediately apparent is that the work, although occasionally excellent, is very uneven.

The Avenue contains Kinnell's first three books. First Poems 1946–54 is the juvenilia its title augurs; except for a couple first-rate poems ("Indian Bread," "Walking Out Alone in Dead of Winter"), it's most remarkable for the unassimilated debts Kinnell incurs (Whitman, Frost, Williams, Eliot, Yeats, Roethke) and for the annunciation of an attitude [in "Conversation at Tea"] which will become the major theme of his later poetry:

       Most men have not seen the world divide,
       Or seen, it did not open wide,
       Or wide, they clung to the safer side
       But I have felt the sundering like a blade….

In What a Kingdom It...