Are you willing to do anything to survive? Getting to the point of crossing many boundaries? Not everyone is willing to resist until the end. Born February 1, 1927 Galway Kinnell was always a fighter. He had served in the U.S. Navy and completed extensive tours in Europe and the Middle East, primarily Iran and France. After the war, 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 writes about a man who, after discovering a smoking drop made by a bear in the snow, sets out on a bear hunt. The hunter faces several obstacles, but manages to overcome his prey. Kinnell uses poetry to show what it means to be a survivor and what it feels like to express yourself. Kinnell chooses a certain style to write his poetry. Of all the forms, he chooses to write The Bear in as few words as possible. Through this method, the poet is able to incorporate that, like the lines of poetry, 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 faster than a third person would. We begin to imagine ourselves in the situation and allow our imagination to think like the hunter. Using enjambement, repetition and short sentences keeps the poem spontaneous. This allows the reader to quickly visualize the events in the poem to help show the events that happened within the poem, but not in too much detail that we lose our interest. For example, in the first four lines the poet writes: “In there... in the center of the paper... society does things just as unusual as the character in the poem. What may seem strange to some is perfectly normal to others. In many Asian countries, for example, people eat various insects and rodents that we, in the Western Hemisphere, find disturbing. Likewise, not everyone finds it normal to keep dogs and cats as pets, in some countries they even eat man's best friend (Chang). Everything we do we justify as our right to survival. 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”. Poet.org. Academy of American Poets, n.d. Web. March 4, 2014. “The Bear.” WordPress.com. WordPress, December 11, 2012. Web. March 04, 2014.Chang, Emily. “Inside China's Dog and Cat Meat Market.” CNN. Cable News Network, March 9, 2010. Web. March 4. 2014