Galway Kinnell(b. 1927)
The Correspondence School Instructor Says Goodbye to His Poetry Students
His Poetry Students
Goodbye, lady in Bangor, w h o sent me
snapshots of yourself, after definitely hinting
you were beautiful; goodbye,
Miami Beach urologist, w h o enclosed plain
brown envelopes for the return of your very
"Clinical Sonnets; goodbye, manufacturer
of brassieres on the Coast, whose eclogues
give the fullest treatment in literature yet
to the sagging breast motif; goodbye, you in San Quentin,1
who wrote, "Being German my hero is Hitler,
instead of "Sincerely yours, at the end of long,
neat-scripted letters demolishing
the pre-Raphaelites:2
I swear to you, it was just my way
of cheering myself up, as I licked
the stamped, self-addressed envelopes,
the game I had
of trying to guess which one of you, this time,
had p o i s o n e d his glue. I did care.
I did read each p o e m entire.
I did say what I thought was the truth
in the mildest words I knew. And now,
in this poem, or c h o p p e d prose, not any better,
I realize, than those troubled lines
I kept sending back to you,
I have to say I am relieved it is over:
at the end I could feel only pity
for that urge toward more life
your p o e m s kept smothering in words, the smell
of which, days later, w o u l d tingle
in your nostrils as new, God-given impulses
to write.
Goodbye
you w h o are, for me, the postmarks again
of shattered towns—Xenia, Burnt Cabins, Hornell—
their loneliness
given away in poems, only their solitude kept.