Synopses & Reviews
After her near-fatal accident, Maxine Kumin feared poetry might have "deserted" her, but this luminous, reflective collection proves her wrong.
Themes of loyalty, longevity, and recovery appear here, and in a series of poems Kumin finds inspiration in addressing other poets, particularly the eminent dead: "Skinnydipping with Wordsworth," "Imagining Marianne Moore in a Butterfly Garden," "Rilke Revisited." Especially intimate and poignant are poems about Anne Sexton, "Three Dreams After a Suicide." And nature continues to engage Kumin: "Inescapably," she says, "many poems come up out of the earth I live on and tend to."
Review
"Always buoyantly optimistic in previous books, the poet is put to the test here by potentially gloomy subject matter....Kumin is able to find humor in her situation....The book is uneven and overlong, but Kumin's avid readership will find irresistible this evidence of her overcoming severe physical injury." Publishers Weekly
Review
"[H]er twelfth and most clarion collection....Kumin moves surefootedly toward beauty as her crisp observations metamorphose into imaginative, hopeful revelations." Donna Seaman, Booklist
Review
"[The book's] contents display an even more developed richness of spirit than do previous works. Although several of the poems treat Kumin's 50-plus year marriage, one feels that the book's title may refer to 'marriage' as a kind of covenant between the poet and her environment....Highly recommended." Library Journal
Synopsis
Themes of loyalty, longevity, and recovery appear here, along with poems addressing the eminent dead: Wordsworth, Gorki, Rukeyser, and others. "Inescapably, many poems come up out of the earth I live on and tend to," Kumin says.
Synopsis
This luminous collection is Maxine Kumin's twelfth volume of poetry, the first since her remarkable memoir, .
About the Author
is the author of eighteen poetry collections as well as numerous works of fiction and nonfiction. Her awards include the Pulitzer Prize, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Aiken Taylor Award, the Poet’s Prize, and the Harvard Arts and Robert Frost medals. A former U.S. poet laureate, she and her husband live on a farm in central New Hampshire where for forty years they bred Arabian horses and took in a succession of rescued dogs.
Table of Contents
I
Skinnydipping with William Wordsworth 15
Thinking of Gorki While Clearing a Trail 17
Imagining Marianne Moore in the Butterfly Garden 19
The Greenhouse Effect 21
Mother of Everyone 23
Rilke Revisited 25
Pantoum, with Swan 27
II
Hard Frost: On a Line by Hopkins 31
Why There Will Always Be Thistle 32
The Politics of Bindweed 34
The Brown Mountain 35
The Potato Sermon 37
The Exchange 39
Highway Hypothesis 41
III
Calling Out of Grays Point 45
Opening the Doors of Perception in Grays Point 48
8 A.M. in Grays Point 50
Afoot in Grays Point 52
My Life 54
IV
Ghazal: On the Table 59
Wagons 60
The Woman Who Moans 61
Grady, Who Lost a Leg in Korea, Addresses Me in the Rehab Gym 63
Grand Canyon 65
V
William Remembers the Outbreak of Civil War 71
Identifying the Disappeared 74
Bringing Down the Birds 76
Soldiers 78
Capital Punishment 80
Want 82
VI
The Long Marriage 85
Keeping in Touch 87
Hark, Hark 89
The Joy of Cooking, 1931 90
Wood 93
Domesticity 94
John Green Takes His Warner, New Hampshire, Neighbor to a Red Sox Game 95
Lying in Bed Away from Home 97
A Place by the Sea 98
Flying 99
Giving Birth 101
A Game of Nettles 104
The Collection 105
The Angel 107
VII
The Ancient Lady Poets 111
Three Dreams After a Suicide 113
Oblivion 115
Acknowledgments