Sample Poetry by Galway Kinnell

“Saint Francis and the Sow” is about Saint Francis, a saint of animals in the Christian religion, and a pig (a sow).  In this poem, the saint speaks about blessings and pigs and compares it to buds and flowers.  This poem was interesting and more informational about Saint Francis and a sow. 

Saint Francis And The Sow
By: Galway Kinnell

The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as Saint Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath
them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

“Two Seasons” is about summer and winter.  Kinnell uses words that describe how he saw “you” in the summer and the winter.  In context, the word “you” might be referring to his lover or his wife.  The poem flowed and I thought it was very descriptive and sweet. 

Two Seasons 

Galway Kinnell

1 
The stars were wild that summer evening 
As on the low lake shore stood you and I 
And every time I caught your flashing eye 
Or heard your voice discourse on anything 
It seemed a star went burning down the sky. 

I looked into your heart that dying summer 
And found your silent woman's heart grown wild 
Whereupon you turned to me and smiled 
Saying you felt afraid but that you were 
Weary of being mute and undefiled 

2 
I spoke to you that last winter morning 
Watching the wind smoke snow across the ice 
Told of how the beauty of your spirit, flesh, 
And smile had made day break at night and spring 
Burst beauty in the wasting winter's place. 

You did not answer when I spoke, but stood 
As if that wistful part of you, your sorrow, 
Were blown about in fitful winds below; 
Your eyes replied your worn heart wished it could 
Again be white and silent as the snow. 

Analysis of Galway Kinnell’s “First Song”

By: Sona Shah

            Galway Kinnell’s “First Song,” written with a touch of rhyming and contradiction entices the reader to keep reading. The poem produces a dark image, but livens up with the boys being joyous from the first song.  As a young boy was tired at the end of a long day from “carting dung,” two other boys, joined him, bringing out the boy’s feeling of contentment.  The three boys together made music from cornstalk violins and the sound of frogs adding to the music.  Galway Kinnell’s last two lines contradict each other, by saying happiness and darkness, and sadness and joy.  “The first song of his happiness, and the song woke/ His heart to the darkness and into the sadness of joy.”  The ending demonstrates that the boy had sadness, being tired from a long day, within his happiness with the first song.  The last two lines also show that the happiness grows from his sadness.  Although the young boy is content and joyous, if he had not have a long and tiring day, he may not realize that the song the boys produces made him happy.  One thing Kinnell uses to liven up the poem is his rhyming, where the first and last lines of each stanza always end with boy and joy.  The message that relates to this is that the boys were blissful and jolly.  Kinnell also rhymes the fourth and fifth lines in the first stanza, and rhymes the second and third lines in the second and third stanzas.  This relates to the contradiction in the last two lines because the first and last lines implies the boy is joyous, but the other rhyming words contradict the joyousness by having a dark image.  For example, Kinnell uses nightfall and small, nightfall implying that it is dark.  Also, he uses the words “dark” a lot, maybe to contradict the contentment of the boy.  “First Song” is a wonderful poem that shows rhythm mixed in with contradictions, such as dark and light, and sadness and happiness.    

                             First Song

                                                    By: Galway Kinnell

                                                    Then it was dusk in Illinois, the small boy

                                                    After an afternoon of carting dung

Hung on the rail fence, a sapped thing

Weary to crying.  Dark was growing tall

And he began to hear the pond frogs all

Calling on his ear with what seemed their joy.

Soon their sound was pleasant for a boy

Listening in the smoky dusk and the nightfall

Of Illinois, and from the fields two small

Boys came bearing cornstalk violins

And they rubbed the cornstalk bows with resins

And the three sat there scraping of their joy.

It was now fine music the frogs and the boys

Did in the towering Illinois twilight make

And into dark in spite of a shoulder’s ache

A boy’s hunched body loved out of a stalk

                                                   The first song of his happiness, and the song woke

                                                   His heart to the darkness and into the sadness of joy.