Kinnell

Maybe a quote from Galway Kinnell, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, will help: “There’s this theory that goes around that it doesn’t matter how many wrecked lives lie behind us, the important thing is to get that brilliant painting, that amazing sonata, that great poem. And all sins are forgotten. But I really don’t believe this. I think, actually, on the contrary, it’s the absence of feelings for others, that damages the great work.”

Tennis lovers extol the elegance of their sport, captured in poems by Galway Kinnell and Robert Pinsky and in the dreamlike documentary “John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection” by the French filmmaker Julien Faraut.

In Kinnell’s poem, it was the parents who made the child feel so cherished, but to my mind, that glow is what grandparents provide best.

������ those grandchildren have lost, two years into a ravaging pandemic that disproportionately kills the elderly, is a precious piece of their birthright: the feeling that they are totally and unconditionally adored, “gleaming with satisfaction at being this very child,” as poet Galway Kinnell once put it.

I admire the fun between Galway Kinnell and Sharon Olds that emanates beyond Squaw Valley.