Kinnell has had an illustrious career as a poet from the very start, quickly coming to the attention of critics, such as Selden Rodman, as “the future of American poetry” with greats such as Robert Frost and E. E. Cummings aging. Kinnell’s first volume, What a Kingdom It Was, was published in 1960. Rodman, reviewing for the New York Times was laudatory in describing Kinnell’s epic “The Avenue Bearing the Initial of Christ into the New World”: “I do not hesitate to call this the freshest, most exciting, and by far most readable poem of a bleak decade.” Four years later, when Kinnell’s second book of poetry, Flower Herding on Mount Monadnock, appeared, critical reception was still enthusiastic. In a review for the New York Times, De Witt Bell discusses how this new work displays...