This volume brings together BODY RAGS and MORTAL ACTS, MORTAL WORDS and THE PAST, three books that are central to the life's work of one of the masters of contemporary poetry. Included here are many of Galway Kinnell's best-loved and most anthologized poems. Kinnell has revised some of the poems for this new edition, and comments on his working method in a prefatory note.

A book-length poem evokes the horror, anguish, and brutality of 20th century history.

After a beautiful and accomplished young actress revives a downcast stranger at a French resort, he reveals that he is immortal.

A collection of more than sixty of Galway Kinnell's poems, spanning 1960-1994.

Preface Sources 1 Death 2 The absurd 3 Moral luck 4 Sexual perversion 5 War and massacre 6 Ruthlessness in public life 7 The policy of preference 8 Equality 9 The fragmentation of value 10 Ethics without biology 11 Brain bisection and the unity of consciousness 12 What is it like to be a bat? 13 Panpsychism 14 Subjective and objective Index.