BOOKS
291
is one of Kinnell 's rev ised borrowings, and they don 't bear much
scrutiny. But a ll in all, the passage works well and to good effect.
When Kinnell 's gaze wanders to the cosmos, however, he stumbl es
th rough a maze of muddl ed metaph ys ics: specul a ting on the na ture o f
love, he o pines:
And yet I think
it mu st be the wound, the wound itself,
which lets u s know and love,
which forces u s to reach out to our misfit
and by a kind
o f poetry of the soul , accompli sh ,
for a momem , the who leness the drunk Greek
extrapolated from hi s high
or fl agella ted out o f an empty hean ,
tha t pures t,
most tragic concumbence, strangers
clasped inLO on e, a momem , of th eir momem on earth .
"A kind of poetry o f the soul "? Ari sto phanes drunk? extrapo la ting o r
fl agell ating (out of an empty heart?) a who leness compr ised of mi sfits?
And considering tha t the passage sta rts with the assump tion there is
some virtue in being let " know and love," doesn 't tha t " purest, mos t
tragic concumbence" leave us a bit in the da rk?
But then Kinnell 's vision is dark. His book, after all , is
The Book
of Nightmares,
and it carries a large freight of sorrow and despa ir, a
psychological map of experience plo tted by the p rofoundl y pessimi sti c
Freud of
Civ ilizat ion and its Disconten ts,
a grisly vi ew of a life from
whi ch
.. .... when you rise-
if you do ri se-it will be in the sothic year
made of the raised salvages
of the fragmem s all unaccomplished
of years past, scraps
and jelli sons of time mortality
could not grind down inLO his meal o f blood and laughter.
The image was first and mo re fin ely drawn by C oya, in
Disasters of
War
but especiall y in hi s la te Black Paintings such as "Saturn Devour–
ing Hi s Children ." Kinnell 's cosmic ambitions threaten
to
devour his.
In choosing to view o nl y half his life, then writing a book in whi ch he
trea ts the who le of it, he willfull y twists the shape of some of hi s
experi ence, then some o f his poetry.
