SOURCE: "Refuge in the Library, on the Farm and in Memories," in The New York Times Book Review, March 2, 1986, pp. 14-15.

In the following excerpt, Beaver praises The Past for its moments of "absorbed attention, " Kinnell 's ability to affix the present into the past and vice versa

[In his work], Galway Kinnell enriches each anecdote. Always there is a narrative frame and skeletal story—a place, a time, a character:

 When the little sow piglet squirmed free,
Gus and I ran her all the way down to the swamp
and lunged and floundered and fell full-length
on our bellies stretching for her—and got her!—
and lay there, all three shining with swamp slime—
she yelping, I laughing, Gus—it was then I knew
he would die soon—gasping and gasping. 

In The Past, Mr. Kinnell nails down the present into the past and transfixes the past...