Kinnell has noted that of all the poems he has written, “The Bear” is one of his favorites. Yet it is one of the poems he understands the least. It is a poem he wrote intuitively and that others have interpreted for him over the years. While he cannot say what he consciously intended in writing the poem, he has given readers insight into the source material.

In a conversation with Iowa Review, Kinnell says he wrote “The Bear” after hearing a story about a man who went on a bear hunt with Inuit people. The story fascinated him, and he wrote the poem out of that fascination, wanting to give it a mythological quality.

Bears feature prominently in myths all over the world, but especially in America and among Indigenous Americans of the Pacific Northwest and the Arctic. Incidentally, the word “arctic” comes from the Greek word “arktos,” which means “bear” because the Arctic circle is located directly under the constellation of the bear. The bear in Inuit culture, like many animals in their mythology, is treated as sacred, with Inuit myths teaching that it has an eternal spirit. The bear sacrifices its physical body for man to eat, but its spirit returns to the spirit world before returning again to sacrifice a new body.