Imperfect Thirst

Galway Kinnell reaffirms his status as "one of the true master poets of his generation" with the publication of Imperfect Thirst, his twelfth book of poems. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the American Book Award (Selected Poems, 1982) and many other awards including a MacArthur Fellowship, Kinnell is perhaps more deeply steeped in the tradition of Whitman than any of his contemporaries. He stands today in the first rank of American poets born in the 1920s. Imperfect Thirst brings together poems which delicately consider the loss of loved ones from childhood, which rejoice in the late love of women, and which face head-on the imminence and power of the shadow of death. Poems like "Rapture," "Running on Silk," and "The Night" are among the most beautiful of love poems of recent years, and poems such as "Holy Shit" approach their elemental subjects with a remarkable balance of good nature and holy dread. It was Morris Dickstein who heralded Kinnell as "one of the true master