Strong Is Your Hold (Hardcover)

by Galway Kinnell (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Throughout his long career, Pulitzer Prize– and National Book Award–winner Kinnell has returned to themes of death, love and the New England landscape and in this, his thoughtful and appealing 11th collection (and his first book of new poems in over a decade), these concerns announce themselves from the start: "I, who so often used to wish to float free / of earth now with all my being want to stay." Occasionally the poet veers too far toward silly, snapshot moments, but for the most part Kinnell injects the mundane—blown-out light bulbs, stubborn old nails, a snake residing in a brush pile—with meaning and passion. Readers familiar with Kinnell's poetry will be acquainted with his children, daughter Maud and son Fergus, who appear in many of these poems. Kinnell continues to write about parental love in ways that reflect the everyday and the transcendent, understanding that "His [Fergus'] birth and the birth of his sister / had put me on earth a second time, / with the duty this time to protect them / and to help them to love themselves." At the heart of the book is Kinnell's now-famous long poem about September 11, 2001, and the collapse of the World Trade Center towers, first published in the New Yorker. While it is difficult to imagine, five years later, what art could encompass the evil and human suffering of that terrible day, "When the Towers Fell" treats the subject with reverence, realizing the event to be a sad "corollary, a small instance in the immense/ lineage of the twentieth century's history of violent death." Rendered carefully over 13 harrowing sections, with lines borrowed from Celan, Crane and Whitman (from whom the book's title also comes), among others, the events of that day are recounted and imagined with powerful feelings of empathy and sorrow. A CD of the author reading the book in its entirety is also included. Just as he might at a live reading, Kinnell (A New Selected Poems, 2000) offers introductions and anecdotes before many of the poems on the CD. Like the work itself, Kinnell's voice is strong and soulful, and often tinged with melancholy. Longtime fans and new readers alike will find this collection a powerful addition to an important body of work. (Nov. 8)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
In his first new collection (with accompanying CD) in this still new, however tarnished century, Kinnell, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, begins with homey lyrics in praise of an enduring marriage, parenthood, and friendship. These are tranquil poems, sweet, amusing, and wholesomely sexy. Sage, too, as in the charming "Conversation," a witty exchange between the poet and his daughter that contains the aphorism, "--When ordinary things feel odd / and odd things normal, be careful." And, indeed, there is much to beware of, as the poet reveals in penetrating accounts of everyday life-and-death battles and elegies to his lost ones. Kinnell's poems are contained, even plain, but there is mineral power in his freshly turned language, and the carefully stacked kindling of his lines leaps into sky-high conflagrations, most indelibly in the magnificent "When the Towers Fell." Seasoned and forthright, Kinnell wisely turns to nature for instruction, noting "the crawling of new life out of the old, / which is what we have for eternity on earth." Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 80 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin (November 8, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618224971
• ISBN-13: 978-0618224975
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #595,599 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Strong Is Your Hold O Mortal Flesh, January 17, 2007

By	prisrob "pris," (New EnglandUSA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

"The book's title derives from Walt Whitman's Last Invocation: Strong is your hold O mortal flesh, / Strong is your hold O love. In 2000, Galway Kinnell, another poet who draws from life, wrote in the preface to "A New Selected Poems": "For many years, I have felt exasperated by my intractable habit of working at certain poems again and again, over long spans of time. But in recent years I have come to accept that, at least in the case of a complex project, this is simply how I write. It makes me think of the digestive process of a Methuselah-ian ruminant animal, one with many many stomachs, that chews its cud for decades (though I don't want to carry this analogy to its logical alimentary end)." This is a typically earthy expression from a writer who, in the exuberant poem "The Bear," evoked a poetic alter ego stalking with knives in his fists and subsisting on "bear blood alone."

Galway Kinnell has been a MacArthur Fellow and the state poet of Vermont. He has won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award and has published several books of translations, including the poetry of Francois Villon and Rainer Maria Rilke. For many years he was the Erich Maria Remarque Professor of Creative Writing at New York University. He is currently a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

My best friend introduced me to Galway Kinnell with the poem 'The Bear' and I fell in love with this poet. 'Strong Is Your Hold' is the eleventh book of poems by Galway Kinnell. The New York Times has called him a true master poet of his generation. Included also is 'When the Towers Fell', a requiem for those who died in the World Trade Center on 9/11. This book of poems is so special to me. It speaks of relationships; family, lovers, father and child, man and wife, sister and brother, friends, and heroes.

There are 24 remarkable poems in the set and one poem for the ages that will forever stand on its own, 'When The Towers Fall'. The last stanza speaks to me as no others about our fellow man and that terrible day;


In our minds the glassy blocks succumb over and over
slamming down floor by floor into themselves
blowing up as if in reverse, exploding.

downward and rolling downward'
the way, in the days of the gods, a god
might rage through the streets, overtaking the fleeing

As each tower goes down, it concentrates
into itself transforms itself
infinitely slowly into a black hole

infinitesimally small: mass
without space, where each light
each life, put out, lies down within us.

and my favorite poem 'Promissory Note'

If I die before you
which is all but certain
then in the moment
before you will see me
become someone dead
in a transformation
as quick as a shooting Star
I will cross over into you
and ask you too carry
not only your memories
but mine too until you
too lie down and erase us
both together into oblivion.

"He uses spare, natural imagery to explore death and tragedy, as in the solemn ''When the Towers Fell.'' For enthusiasts with Google-era attention spans, Strong Is Your Hold includes a CD of the professorially voiced poet reading the entire collection." EW

'Strong Is Your Hold' is a book of poems to be revered and to read often. It is to be rejoiced, and to remember our relationships as no others. This is a testament to a man who can put into words those feelings that surface when we truly love. Highly Recommended.
prisrob 1/17/06

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "In our minds the glassy blocks succumb over and over...", December 5, 2006

By	Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

After more than a decade, Kinnell has written his eleventh book of poetry, the title derived from Walt Whitman's "Last Invocation". Covering a variety of topics, this volume includes a moving requiem for 9/11 "When the Towers Fell", each selection introspective and thought-provoking.

Kinnell plumbs past, present, love, desire and memory, a poet's perception of perfect and imperfect moments:

"Once when we were playing
hide-and-seek and it was time
to go home, the rest gave up...

I remained hidden as a matter
of honor until the moon rose."
(Hide-and-Seek 1933)

Death is a familiar, accepted with a particular grace that comes from many years of living, marking the seasons, the comings and goings of loved ones:

"This morning did she wake
in the dark, almost used up
by her year of pain?

When her room filled
with daylight, how could she not
have slipped under a spell, with him
next to her, his arms around her..."
(How Could She Not: In Memory of Jane Kenyon 1947-1995)

Not feared, but bartered with, death is yet another stage of the process of life, a bridge:

"If I die before you...

I will cross over into you
and ask you to carry
not only your own memories
but mine too until you
too lie down and erase us
both together into oblivion."
(Promissory Note)

The requiem for the unimaginable, (/11, is painful, poignant and forever touched with the images of loss and disbelief, images burned into the nation's psyche:
"In our minds the glassy blocks succumb over and over
slamming down floor by floor into themselves, blowing up as if in reverse...

As each tower goes down it concentrates into itself, transforms itself
Infinitely slowly into a black hole..."
(When the Towers Fell)

A much awaited collection, Strong Is Your Hold does not disappoint. Luan Gaines/2006.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The View From "The Stone Table", April 20, 2008

By	Jeffrey (Boston, MA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Strong Is Your Hold: Poems (Paperback)

Galway Kinnell's latest collection begins with the poem, "The Stone Table" which reflects Kinnell's signature style while also going deeper into terrain he has explored throughout his life's work. The poem places us "Here on the hill behind the house/we sit with our feet up on the edge/of the eight-by-ten stone slab/that was once the floor of the cow pass." From this vantage point, the poet leads us to consider the geography of his poetic icons, "the blackberry thicket," ("Blackberry Eating"); "Freedom," ("Freedom, New Hampshire"); "the bear," ("The Bear") among them. The stone table becomes a resting place that hints at the fourth stanza's meditation on Donald Hall's trip to Jane Kenyon's grave and to closing with the poet's desire to stay on "this earth we attach ourselves to so fiercely."

Strong Is Your Hold is a celebration of our attachment to the world and what it means to be human, as well as a testimony to the past and to our memories. It is not only a masterful work by one of American poetry's giants but provides the kind of reflection or commentary on Kinnell's life themes that make this book critical for any fan of Kinnell's poetry. It is a book in conversation with his other work, with the world of poetry, and with the world. The volume also comes with a CD of the poet reading the poems from the book and anyone who has heard Galway Kinnell read knows that this alone is worth the price of the book.