Collection number: MC 64 [Offsite Storage]
Size: 105 (approx.) boxes
(105 cu.ft.)
About Galway Kinnell
Galway Mills Kinnell was born in Providence, R.I., on Feb. 1, 1927, the son of immigrants, James Kinnell, a carpenter, from Scotland, and Elizabeth Mills Kinnell, from Ireland. He grew up in Pawtucket, R.I., one of four children. He and his family spent many enjoyable summers in Freedom, NH.
At 15 he went to Wilbraham Academy in Massachusetts (now Wilbraham & Monson Academy), after which he served two years in the U.S. Navy during WWII before entering Princeton University where he earned a BA with highest honors in 1948. His college roommate, the poet W. S. Merwin, introduced him to the work of William Butler Yeats, whose poems, along with those of Rainer Maria Rilke, exerted a lifelong influence. He earned an MA from the University of Rochester in 1949.
He began his career at the University of Chicago as a poetry instructor for correspondence students, followed by several overseas teaching jobs in France, Australia and a journalism tour in Iran that led to the writing of his only novel, Black Light. Returning to the United States, Kinnell joined the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in Louisiana and spent much of the 1960s involved in the Civil Rights Movement.
He subsequently served as poet-in-residence at numerous colleges and universities, including the University of California at Irvine, Columbia University, Sarah Lawrence College, and Brandeis University. He finished his teaching career at New York University, where he was the Erich Maria Remarque Professor of Creative Writing. After retiring from NYU, he lived in Sheffield, Vermont until his death.
Kinnell was married in 1965 to the Spanish translator Ines Delgado de Torres. Their two children, Fergus and Maud, were named for figures in Yeats. The couple divorced after 20 years. In 1997, Kinnell married Barbara Kammer Bristol. He died from leukemia at age eighty-seven on October 28, 2014.
Many of his life experiences found expression in his poetry. “To me,” he said, “poetry is somebody standing up, so to speak, and saying, with as little concealment as possible, what it is for him or her to be on earth at this moment.”
Kinnell was the author of ten books of poetry, a novel, a selection of interviews, and a book for children, as well as translations of works by Yves Bonnefoy, Yvan Goll, Francois Villon and Rainer Maria Rilke.
In 1982, his Selected Poems won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Additional honors received in his lifetime include the 2010 Wallace Stevens Award for proven mastery in the art of poetry by the Academy of American Poets, a MacArthur Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a Rockefeller Grant, the 2002 Frost Medal from the Poetry Society of America, the 1974 Shelley Prize from the Poetry Society of America, and the 1975 Medal of Merit from the National Institute of Arts and Letters. From 2001 to 2007 he served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.
Two days after Kinnell’s death, poet C. K. Williams described his colleague in a tribute written for the New York Times. “In public and in private, he was a singular presence, physically imposing, with the kind of efficiency and lack of excess gestures that very powerful people can have, but he was also gentle in manner, warm and solicitous, and his voice had a certain resonant kindness, with overtones of sympathy and solicitude, all of which came through not only in person but when he recited his poems to his numerous and enthusiastic audiences. He was a musical, dramatic, moving reader of his own poetry, and, when he had the chance, he liked to read aloud the poetry of others: John Clare and Keats especially, and Whitman, and once I had the pleasure of hearing him read to an audience one of my own poems, which was—there’s no other word for it—thrilling.”
About the Galway Kinnell Papers
The Dimond Library began its collection of Kinnell’s papers in 1982 with the acquisition of his correspondence with his friend and mentor, poet Charles Bell of Sante Fe, NM. Subsequent additions include correspondence with others, notebooks, and manuscripts of poems and other writings as well as video recordings of readings and programs by Kinnell. The collection is not fully processed and use is restricted.
Administrative Information
Access Restrictions
This collection is open. Permission to directly quote any materials must be obtained from the estate of the creator.
This collection is housed in the Library Storage Building; access requires 48 hours’ notice. Please contact the Special Collections staff prior to visiting the library.
Copyright Notice
Contents of this collection are governed by U.S. copyright law. For questions about publication or reproduction rights, contact Special Collections staff.
Preferred Citation
[Identification of item], [Folder number], [Box], Galway Kinnell Papers, MC 64, Milne Special Collections and Archives, University of New Hampshire Library, Durham, NH, USA.
Acquisitions Information
Multiple donations and purchases: November 1980 - October 2003 (many varied accession numbers)
Related Material
Published works in the University of New Hampshire library catalog.
The Galway Kinnell Papers (1936-1980) in the Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana.
Collection Arrangement
The collection is in the original order as received by the library. A box inventory was conducted in March 2008 as several box numbers had been inadvertently skipped earlier.
Collection Contents
| Box 1-10 | ||
|---|---|---|
| Correspondence to Kinnell | ||
| Box 11 | ||
| Correspondence from Kinnell | ||
| Box 12 | ||
| Professional materials (incl. correspondence) | ||
| Box 13 | ||
| Correspondence from others to others | ||
| Box 14 | ||
| Mss by Kinnell: The Past; Black Light | ||
| Box 15 | ||
| Mss by Kinnell: The Past; Black Light | ||
| Box 16 | ||
| Misc. files: news clippings, NYU meetings, etc. | ||
| Box 16a-19 | ||
| When One Has Lived A Long Time Alone (multiple drafts) | ||
| Box 20 | ||
| When One Has Lived A Long Time Alone (Drafts of book-length collection send out to various others; Donald Hall, Hauden Carruth,etc.) (including The Auction and Oatmeal | ||
| Box 21 | ||
| The Essential Whitman | ||
| Box 22 | ||
| The Past (1984-85); correspondence with Bly, Hall, Lilach, and Charity; multiple drafts – including The Fundamental Project of Technology) | ||
| Box 23 | ||
| The War; The Visit; Flies | ||
| Box 24 | ||
| Imperfect Thirst, mss. The Groans; The Night; The Road Across Skye; Telephoning in Mexican Sunlight; Parkinson’s Disease; Lackawanna; The Music of Poetry; The Cellist/Solo in High Dreary; The Pen; Rapture | ||
| Box 25 | ||
| Holy Shit; This War; The Man in the Chair; Hitchhiker; Showing My Father Through Freedom; My Mother’s R & R; Rapture; The Groans; The Night; The Road Across Skye; Lackawanna; Dante’s Inferno; Talk on Whitman and Dickinson, New York Public Library, 1992 | ||
| Box 26 | ||
| Imperfect Thirst (earlier drafts called Neverland); The Garter Snake and the Goldfinch; The Man in the Chair; Showing My Father Through Freedom; The Deconstruction of Emily Dickinson; My Mother’s R & R; Picnic; Holy Shit; Running on Silk | ||
| Box 27 | ||
| Imperfect Thirst | ||
| Box 28 | ||
| How The Alligator Missed Breakfast (1st written version; proofs; copies of hardcover and paperback; correspondence with publisher); Selected Poems (proofs; pasted up book; correspondence with publisher); Mortal Acts, Mortal Words (proofs); The Poems of Franco Villon (proofs) | ||
| Box 29 | ||
| Prose: On Imagining the Poetry of the Future; Flower Herding on Mount Monadnock ; commencement speech at the Kent School, 1985; On Translating Poetry; Hawaii From the Air; Whitman movie; transcript of interview with “Rose”, 6/83; Life Cycle in Poems (reading with Sharon Olds); foreword to Hayden Carruth’s Selected Poems, 1987; address at the World Scholar Athlete Games, Newport, RI; presentation speech for award to Betty Kray, Dec. 9, 1985; drafts of various poems | ||
| Box 30 | ||
| Three Books (galleys); various presentations or speeches | ||
| Box 31-36 | ||
| Professional communications, flyers, announcements, programs | ||
| Box 37 | ||
| Uncorrected proofs (?), special editions, master’s thesis | ||
| Box 38 | ||
| Published works by Kinnell – special editions | ||
| Box 39-39a | ||
| Broadsides | ||
| Box 40 | ||
| 1984 Kinnell poetry calendar | ||
| Box 41-45 | ||
| Audio-visual recordings | ||
| Box 46-53 | ||
| Mss by others | ||
| Box 54 | ||
| Published works by others | ||
| Box 55 | ||
| Broadsides by others | ||
| Box 56-60 | ||
| miscellaneous | ||
| Box 62 | ||
| photocopies of contributions to periodicals | ||
| Box 64 | ||
| Correspondence to Kinnell | ||
| Box 65-67 | ||
| Correspondence, ms (Imperfect Thirst), mss by others, flyers, etc. | ||
| Box 69 | ||
| correspondences from others | ||
| Box 70 | ||
| Mss by others | ||
| Box 71 | ||
| Miscellaneous (largely printed materials, not drafts of poetry or prose) | ||
| Box 74 | ||
| Mss by others and related correspondence; Japanese translation of Selected Poems | ||
| Box 75 | ||
| Correspondence (1989-1991; 1995-1996) | ||
| Box 76-81 | ||
| The Essential Rilke, mss and proofs; plus revised edition | ||
| Box 82 | ||
| Correspondence, mss., (draft of speech for Maud’s wedding) | ||
| Box 83 | ||
| Address to Bellarmine College, KY, 1997; correspondence, etc | ||
| Box 84 | ||
| Correspondence | ||
| Box 85 | ||
| Correspondence, mss for “early” peoms, mss for Why Regret | ||
| Box 87-89 | ||
| Miscellaneous, mainly correspondence 1999-2001 | ||
| Box 93 | ||
| Correspondence 2002-2003 | ||
| Box 94 | ||
| Mss: Three Books, The Avenue Bearing the Initial, When the Towers Fell | ||
| Box 95 | ||
| Mss: drafts of When the Towers Came Down; 2002 edition of Avenue Bearing the Initials of Christ; mss by others, correspondence, etc. | ||
| Box 96 | ||
| Mss by others, correspondence, etc | ||
| Box 97-99 | ||
| Mss and drafts for Strong is Your Hold | ||
| Box 100 | ||
| Drafts for Strong in Your Hold, miscellaneous flyers, rereadings, etc | ||
| Box 101 | ||
| Mss by others, correspondence | ||
| Box 102-104 | ||
| Literary magazines containing Kinnell poems and interviews | ||
| Box 105 | ||
| Mss and drafts for Strong is Your Hold, and correspondence | ||
