Wait

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1980

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Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Further Reading & Resources

Related Poems

"Little Sleep's-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight" by Galway Kinnell (1971)

One of Kinnell’s earlier poems, “Little Sleep’s-Head” is written in bleak language as Kinnell speaks to his young daughter. The work similarly engages with the dark reality of death, the fear of a life cut short, and the importance of fully experiencing life, while demonstrating Kinnell’s evolution as a poet.

"Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night" by Dylan Thomas (1951)

Dylan Thomas’s famous work engages with many of the same central themes as “Wait,” encouraging various groups of men to refuse death as long as possible and savor life until the last moment.

“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow” from Macbeth, Act V, Scene 5, lines 19-28 by William Shakespeare (1606)

There are many thematic and literary parallels between “Wait” and Macbeth’s famous soliloquy on hearing of his wife’s death. Kinnell’s poem can be read as a rebuttal to Macbeth’s grief-stricken lamentations on life’s meaningless and emptiness, the monotonous pace of days until the last moment of time, and the insignificant performance of life.

"The Summer Day" by Mary Oliver (1992)

Published more than a decade after “Wait,” Mary Oliver’s “The Summer Day” takes a different approach to questioning how people spend their lives, what is meaningful and purposeful in a short lifetime, and—like Kinnell—engages with nature imagery to convey meaning.

"Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman (1892)

Whitman had a huge influence on Kinnell, with the latter citing Whitman’s “Song of Myself” as a work that inspired him as a poet to draw from his own experiences and write in descriptive language and long drawn-out lines.

Further Literary Resources

Kinnell, Galway. Mortal Acts, Mortal Words. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1980.

“Wait” was first published in Kinnell’s collection of poetry under the title Mortal Acts, Mortal Words, which offers a selection of the author’s poetry from the same period of his work, which was just prior to winning the Pulitzer Prize and a MacArthur Fellowship.

Bly, Robert. Collected Poems. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2018.

Perhaps the most well-known poet of the Deep Image poetry movement, Robert Bly was a contemporary of Galway Kinnell, writing about and invested in many of the same social issues of the 1960s including vocal opposition to the Vietnam War. Bly’s Collected Poems provides an opportunity to compare and contrast two contemporary poets writing in the same literary movement.

Whitman, Walt. The Essential Whitman. New York: Ecco Press, 1987.

This collection of Walt Whitman’s poems was compiled by Galway Kinnell and includes an introduction from Kinnell himself, lending insight into the influence Whitman’s work had, what Kinnell thought to be Whitman’s most important poetry, and offering a broader contextualization of Kinnell’s work within the American poetic tradition.