Kinnell, Galway, "Poetry, Personality, and Death," in A Field Guide to Contemporary Poetry and Poetics, Rev. ed., edited by Stuart Friebert, David Walker, and David Young, Oberlin, OH: Oberlin College Press, 1997, pp. 203-223. As the title of this essay suggests, Kinnell examines the relationships between the poem and the mortal human behind and within the poem. In an age of self-absorption, he says, "poetry has taken on itself the task of breaking out of the closed ego," but that requires a "death of the self." He defines this concept further, as "a death out of which one might hope to be reborn more giving, more alive, more open, more related to the natural life." Along with "The Poetics of the Physical World," it is considered to be one of Kinnell's most important, and controversial, aesthetic statements.

--------, Walking Down the Stairs: Selections from Interviews, Ann...