You probably wouldn’t know this man if he told you his name.  You probably wouldn’t recognize him even if he were sitting in front of you on the subway and you were reading a book with his photo on the back cover. Galway Kinnell is a poet who truly values his relative anonymity despite winning a Pulitzer Prize and writing many highly acclaimed books of poetry.

The Saturday Review describes Kinnell as a poet who finds it difficult to identify with all the “hoopla” about himself. He prefers the freedom and safety of anonymity versus the limelight, and is careful not to let his success “overcome and poison him.” He aspires to live each day with that same feeling of wonder he had as a boy growing up on Avenue C on the Lower East Side in Manhattan.

Frankly, I had never heard of Galway Kinnell until I took a poetry elective in Mrs. Kocela’s class as a junior at Stuyvesant High School in NYC.

Avenue C is alluded to in Kinnell’s work, “Avenue Bearing the Initial of Christ into the New World,” a major book of his poetry.  Mrs. Kocela, went with me to Rizzoli’s on Fifth Avenue around Christmas to pick up a copy, but they were sold out. They had another of Kinnell’s works,  “The Book of Nightmares’, so she bought it and then later surprised me with it as a gift, signing it, “Love, Judyth”.  From there we sojourned uptown to the 92nd Street Y where there would be a poetry seminar for students hosted by Mr. Kinnell.  My friend Ben Clark, myself, and some selected high school students from other Manhattan schools had been invited to participate.

The seminar room was dark and sparse because it was currently being prepared for an upcoming photography exhibit. As we slowly and silently gravitated toward the long mahogany seminar table, unsure of what would soon transpire, we tried avoiding one another’s gazes at all costs. Instinctively we felt a strong need to keep our defenses because we knew that “poetry seminar” was a euphemism for “personal criticism seminar.”

After a ruddy and squirmish twenty minutes’ delay, the large oak doors finally opened. Our collective blushing was apparent when we looked up to see the quickly entering figure.

Mr. Kinnell darted in, navy jacket half-off, his strands of wavy chestnut hair windswept in an unnatural slant. He was a large man, late 40s, with disproportionately large hands, and with  eyes laminated by the enthusiasm of a new world explorer. A quick remark about heavy traffic and it was on to a reading of his latest poem, on blackberries of all things.

We were at once struck and transformed by his poetry reading style and the playful twists of language. Somehow poetry seemed less of a bully, no longer intimidating or dull, coming to life and taking up residence in Mr. Kinnell for the next several hours.  Through his poems he  showed all of us how beautiful and powerful language could be when words are selected with care, when the essence of a mood is conveyed in a tight, economic yet still musical fashion, and of how simplicity can reigns over overly-complex imagery.

Each student was then asked to read a poem of her own aloud, after which we would all comment on them. Warning! Warning!   We sheepishly tugged out our papers, bracing ourselves for a possible verbal mauling which to some extent did occur, leaving our egos cracked but not shattered.

We noticed that Mr. Kinnell listened very intently to us and was genuinely interested not only in our creativity but in each of us as young adults searching for ourselves.

I had come to this poetry seminar armed with several good poems, but for some reason decided to read my worst one, hoping to get some constructive advice. But as soon as I read it aloud, I observed its shoddy structure, entangled imagery and loose mixed metaphors, so I  quickly regretted it. I just knew I had these really killer poems in my binder, but it was too late.

Mr. Kinnell remarked on some areas of improvement while maintaining a supportive tone.  I was completely crestfallen, but had my chance later to redeem myself when we all gathered for another round, but this time at podium in front of a room full of people at the 92nd St Y,  the audience full of students, teachers and anyone else who happened to gambol into the room… Danger! Danger!

I was chosen to be the first, and so read my poem, “The Rebel”, which was much more introspective and better constructed than my initial fiasco about a cherry tomato. The snapshot of Mr. Kinnell’s face in reaction to what I had just read is one I will never forget. He radiated true satisfaction. And maybe surprise? He asked me about some of the lines in it and I, shocked that he had such an interest in it as much to ask,  simply replied that it was inspired by my grandfather.

Before reading my work, I did make a very short comment about why I wrote it, and therefore set a precedent — a short background, the reading itself, then questions from Mr. Kinnell and the audience.  Took hours for all of us to finish, but we all enjoyed such power at having our words and thoughts be treated with so much importance, and to be seen as a form of beauty.

After it was all over and we returned to our homes, using his advice on word selection I began searching for how I would describe Galway Kinnell, the poet.  He was a large black bear sitting on a slab of rock, fur glistening in the rain, eating blackberries, contented and unrepining in mid-forest at the thrill of the entire experience, compelled by bear-ness to simply be.

It was a huge day and experience for us acne-laced high school kids, searching through the power of the word to find ourselves, and of our unique place in the universe.

(Stuyvesant High School, NYC, 1983)