Her pieces, collected in two volumes, contain exemplary evidence of her laser-like intelligence and a view of poetry that we might expect from an older generation of critics such as Yvor Winters. As we might expect, Kinzie has little patience for self-indulgence, pyrotechnics for its own sake, or frivolity. A bad poem is a moral affront, not merely an aesthetic failure or a mismanagement of linguistic energies. All of this is by way of setting the stage for the new book, which has the heft of a thoroughly composed volume, structured like a performance that builds up to and falls away from climaxes. It also shines with a deeply felt sense of shared humanity.
Judgment gives way to wonder, to the quite normal fears of parent for child.
She is as vigilant as ever, but her attention is directed more at her own child and her place in the cosmos than at either art or history. Kinzie's poems often pack a wallop at the end. From the lighted laughter of the faculty club Came in his tuxedo a young bartender Who might have played lacrosse. Who had their homes to sail to and the rest of life. The two long poems show two sides of Kinzie's disposition, the first of which comes as something of a surprise.