American poet who examined the primitive bases of existence that are obscured by the overlay of civilization. His poems examine the effects of personal confrontation with violence and inevitable death, attempts to hold death at bay, the plight of the urban dispossessed, and the regenerative powers of love and nature.

Kinnell was educated at Princeton University (B.A., 1948) and the University of Rochester (M.A., 1949). He taught at the University of Chicago in the early 1950s and was a field worker for the Congress of Racial Equality in Louisiana in 1963. Thereafter he taught and was poet in residence or poetry consultant at a number of colleges and universities, including Columbia, Princeton, and New York universities.

Kinnell's many collections of poetry include What a Kingdom It Was (1960), Flower Herding on Mount Monadnock (1964), Body Rags (1967), The Avenue Bearing the Initial of Christ into the New World: Poems 1946–64 (1974), Mortal Acts, Mortal Words (1980), Selected Poems (1982), for which he won both a National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize, When One Has Lived a Long Time Alone (1990), and Imperfect Thirst (1994). Kinnell also wrote a novel, Black Light (1966; rev. ed. 1980).