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Born in Providence, Rhode Island , Kinnell has said that as a youth he was turned on to Poetry by Edgar Allan Poe and Emily Dickinson , drawn to both the musical appeal of their poetry and the idea that they led solitary lives. The allure of language and social separation spoke to what he describes as a rather homogenized atmosphere of the town he grew up in, Pawtucket, Rhode Island . He studied at the University Of Rochester (Master of Arts) then Princeton University , graduating in 1948 alongside friend and fellow poet W.S. Merwin . He traveled extensively in Europe and the Middle East , and went to Paris on a Fulbright Fellowship . It was the 1960s though, and the Civil Rights Movement in the United States caught his attention. On coming back, he joined CORE ( Congress Of Racial Equality ) and worked on voter registration and workplace integration in Hammond, Louisiana . This effort got him arrested, which he recalls in his book-long poem ''The Book of Nightmares'', which was also influenced by his thoughts of the Vietnam War (Kinnell was an active protestor). While much of his work seems to deal with social issues, it is by no means confined to them. Some critics have pointed to the spiritual dimensions of his poetry, and others focus on the nature imagery he often uses. “The Fundamental Project of Technology” deals with all three of those elements, creating an eerie, chant-like and surreal exploration of the horrors atomic weapons inflict on humanity and nature. Sometimes Kinnell often utilizes simple and brutal images (“Lieutenant! / This corpse will not stop burning!” from “The Dead Shall be Raised Incorruptible”) to address his anger at the destructiveness of humanity, informed by Kinnell’s activism and love of nature. There’s also a certain sadness in all of the horror—“Nobody would write poetry if the world seemed perfect.” Yet, there’s also optimism and beauty in his quiet, ponderous language, especially in the large role animals and children have in his later work (“Other animals are angels. Human babies are angels”), evident in poems such as “Daybreak” and “After Making Love We Hear Footsteps”. He was the Erich Maria Remarque Professor of Creative Writing at New York University and a Chancellor of the American Academy Of Poets . He now is retired. WORKS
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