Critical Essay by Ralph J. Mills, Jr.
Galway Kinnell's first collection, What a Kingdom It Was (1960), can be viewed in retrospect now as one of those volumes signaling decisive changes in the mood and character of Amer-
Galway Kinnell 1927– © Thomas Victor 1984ican poetry as it departed from the witty, pseudo-mythic verse, apparently written to critical prescription, of the 1950's to arrive at the more authentic, liberated work of the 1960's. Our recent poetry shows how closely and vulnerably aware of the palpable life of contemporary society poets have become, for, increasingly during the past decade or so, they have opened themselves as persons to the complex, frequently incongruous, violence-ridden ethos of the age in an effort to ground the poetic imagination in a shared, perceptible reality. This kind of openness—a sensitive receptivity in which the poet, to borrow a phrase of Heidegger's about Hölderlin, "is exposed to...
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