Walking Down the Stairs: Selections from Interviews

Poets on Poetry

by Galway Kinnell

Collects Kinnell's thoughts about poetry

Genres: Poetry

128 pages, Paperback

First published July 15, 1978

About the author

Kinnell studied at Princeton University, graduating in 1948. He later obtained a Master's degree from the University of Rochester.

As a young man, Kinnell served in the US Navy and traveled extensively in Europe and the Middle East. His first volume of poetry, What a Kingdom It Was, was published in 1960.

Kinnell became very involved in the U.S. civil rights movement upon his return, joining CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) as a field worker and participating in a number of marches and other civil actions.

Kinnell was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award for Selected Poems (1980), a MacArthur Fellowship, a Rockefeller Grant, the 1974 Shelley Prize of the Poetry Society of America, and the 1975 Medal of Merit from National Institute of Arts and Letters. He served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2001 to 2007.

Reviews

[Jennifer Kanke · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I know it's the dream of every poem to be a myth."

[David Park · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice. Always love to read interviews. Love the way he talks about poems.

[Margaret Gray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good 👍

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this a lot. It was a quick and easy read - as he presents selections (and edited ones at that) from interviews he has done. His insights on poetry and life and writing and children and nature - all inspire and challenge me to think about the ways in which I see the world and my own life within it. He writes/speaks with wit and gentleness. I’m very glad I read it.

[A.P. Sweet · Rating 3 out of 5]

Galway has always been an inspiration to my writing and reading some of his responses to his poems really makes them better. He is a wonderful writer as well as a speaker. This book has lot of insight.