Galway Kinnell's Beautiful and Life-Giving Poem About a Suicidal New Friend – The Marginalian

“To decide whether life is worth living is to answer a fundamental philosophical question,” Albert Camus famously wrote – a statement that has grown in intellectual appreciation and spiritual significance in the half century since. But beyond philosophy, when the desire to live or die plays in the personal space, it causes a lot of pain – not only for the person who is worried about suicide but also for those who love him, not to mention the risk of contagion of suicide in society.

Pulitzer-winning poet Galway Kinnell (February 1, 1927–October 28, 2014) answered this fundamental question of existence with incredible compassion and spiritual grace in a poem he wrote to a student who was considering suicide after a love breakup. First published in Kinnell's well-titled 1980 collection Deadly Actions, Deadly Wordslater it was included Selected New Poems (public library).

In this recording courtesy of the Academy of American Poets, Kinnell brings his miraculously life-giving words to life:

WAIT

Wait, for now.
Don't trust everything, if you have to.
But hope for hours. They didn't
carried you everywhere, so far?
Personal events will be fun again.
The hair will be interesting.
Pain will be sweet.
Buds that open out of season will be lovely too.
Secondhand gloves will also be popular,
it is their memories that give them away
the need for other hands. And destruction
for lovers it is the same: that is a great vanity
carved into small things like us
requests to be filled; the need
because the new love is faithfulness to the old things.

wait
Don't go early in the morning.
You are tired. But everyone is tired.
But no one is tired enough.
Wait a moment and listen.
hair music,
Music of pain,
looms music weaves all our love again.
Be there to hear it, it will be the end of time,
too much to hear,
the flute of all your presence,
brought down by grief, they played themselves into complete exhaustion.

Thanks to Rosanne Cash and Paul Holdengräber of the New York Public Library for bringing me this delightful poem. Fill it in with Diane Ackerman on what working at a suicide prevention hotline taught her about the human spirit.

For other lovely poets doing their work, listen to Sylvia Plath read “Spinster,” “The Birthday Present,” and “The Disquieting Muses,” Billy Collins read “Aristotle,” TS Eliot read “Burnt Norton,” Lucille Clifton read “Won't You Celebrate With Me,” Elizabeth read “Ars Poetix: Mary” and Sarah Alexander Belie Oliver read “Wild Geese.”