The Proem introduces several major themes of the book, including accuracy, error, nostalgia, and the arbitrary, via close readings of a number of poems, prominently ‘English: An Ode’ by Robert Hass, ‘Hedge School’ by Paul Muldoon, and ‘Nostalgia’ by Eavan Boland, as well as poems by Donald Davie, Tony Harrison, and Galway Kinnell. Noting that both etymology and poetry have a history of dubious association with notions of ‘truth’, the Proem proposes to investigate what kinds of truth may be carried or crafted by etymology in poetry, and by poetic etymology.
In 1964, Nell and Dilys left New York on the Queen Mary, bound for London. The next stop was Burton Bradstock in West Dorset, home of poet Howard Griffin, where Nell began painting garden views. The women spent time in Paris and Lisbon before flying to the Caribbean island of St. Lucia, where Nell’s dealer Elinor Poindexter and her husband owned a banana plantation. Nell delighted in the native plants and birds. She taught the teenaged son of their cook to read and write and enjoyed visits by Arthur Cohen, her major collector, and poet Galway Kinnell. But despite the lush surroundings, the eleven months on St. Lucia were plagued by inconveniences, from quarreling workmen to scorpions and torrential rains. Nell’s April 1966 Poindexter Gallery show, which included many works completed in St. Lucia, was well reviewed. Then came a great shock: in late May, Dilys suddenly moved out.
A literary text is, for a book artist, like a score for a musician or a script for an actor: a basis on which to construct an artistic performance. Book artist Claire Van Vliet has, at her Janus Press, constructed dazzling broadsides and artist books based on poetry by, among others, Hayden Carruth, Galway Kinnell, and Margaret Kaufman. These works test or ignore boundaries between conventional categories such as book and broadside, two-dimensional display, and three-dimensional construction. The object she built based on Denise Levertov’s poem “Batterers” unfolds especially powerfully in time and three-dimensional space.
An Interview with Galway Kinnell