Are you willing to do anything to survive? Go so far as to cross many borders? Not everyone is ready to last until the end. Born on February 1, 1927, Galway Kinnell has always been a fighter. He served in the United States Navy and completed numerous tours in Europe and the Middle East, primarily in Iran and France. After the wars, he returned home as a field worker and became an activist in the civil rights movement. Kinnell writes often about his struggles as a soldier and his experiences as a reform activist (Poets.org). In his poem The Bear, Kinnell tells of a man who, after discovering smoking scat made by a bear in the snow, sets out to hunt a bear. The hunter faces several obstacles, but manages to overtake his prey. Kinnell uses the poem to show what it means to be a survivor and what it feels like to speak out. Kinnell chooses a certain style to write his poem. Of all the forms, he chose to write The Bear with as few words as possible. Thanks to this method, the poet manages to integrate that, like the lines of the poem, life is short. Additionally, Kinnell makes his poem more realistic by putting us in the driver's seat. He writes the poem in the first person, constantly using the word “I”. The first person perspective allows the reader to connect more quickly than a third person would. We begin to imagine ourselves in the situation and allow our imagination to think like the hunter. By using enjambment, repetition, and short sentences, he keeps the poem spontaneous. This allows the reader to quickly visualize the events of the poem to help show the events that happened in the poem, but not in so much detail that our interest is lost. For example, in the first four lines, the poet writes: “In the middle of the paper, poetry does things as unusual as the character in the poem. What may seem strange to some is completely normal to others. In many Asian countries, for example, people eat various insects and rodents that we in the Western Hemisphere find troubling. Likewise, not everyone finds it okay to keep dogs and cats as pets, some countries even eat man's best friend (Chang). Everything we do, we justify as our right to survive. Survival pushes us to do unexpected things because we are a species that knows that if we don't take care of ourselves, we will suffer or die. Works Cited “Galway Kinnell”. Poets.org. Academy of American Poets, nd Web. March 4, 2014. “The Bear”. Wordpress.com. WordPress, December 11, 2012. Web. March 4, 2014.Chang, Emily. “Inside China’s Cat and Dog Meat Market.” CNN. Cable News Network, March 9, 2010. Web. March 4. 2014