SOURCE: A review of The Past, in "On Poetry: Songs of Science," The New Leader, Vol. LXVIII, No. 16, pp. 19-20.

In the following excerpt reviewing The Past, Pettingell highlights Kinnell's "biological perception of the world".

History was the controlling trope for 19th-century writers: Novelists, essayists, poets, and playwrights all affirmed their hopes for mankind's progress, or their fears about the decline and fall of civilization, by pointing to the record. The discoveries of Darwin and Einstein seem, at first glance, to have shifted our metaphor to science. Even Biblical fundamentalists who reject evolutionary theory will often subscribe to "Social Darwinian" demonstrations of survival of the fittest in the marketplace. Though physics may be too technical for a mass audience, "relativity" has revolutionized moral attitudes. But literature still frequently shrinks from science. Old-fashioned narratives continue to treat time as if it operated like a piece of thread unwinding from...