Copyright © 1994 by Galway Kinnell

All rights reserved

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kinnell, Galway, date.
Imperfect thirst / Galway Kinnell.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-395-71089-8 ISBN 0-395-75528-x (pbk.)
I. Title.
PS3521.1582146 1994
811'.54—dc20 94-27044 CIP

Book design by Anne Chalmers

Printed in the United States of America

VG 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3

The poems in this book originally appeared in the following
publications:
The American Poetry Review: The Deconstruction of Emily Dickinson, My Mother's R&R, The Night, The Pen, Showing My Father Through Freedom, The Striped Snake and the Goldfinch.
Antaeus: "The Music of Poetry."
The Boston Review: Telephoning in Mexican Sunlight.
Brick: Holy Shit.

The Hungry Mind Review: Sheffield Ghazals (which appeared in early form in the works-in-progress issue of Ploughshares under the title Sheffield Pastorals), Trees
The Atlantic Monthly: The Cellist.
The Paris Review: Lackawanna.
Poetry: Neverland.
Princeton University Library Chronicle: The Road Across Skye.
The New Yorker: Flies, Hitchhiker, The Man in the Chair, Parkinson's Disease, Picnic, Rapture.
The Threepenny Review: Running on Silk.