Maxine Kumin, whose previous works include the poetry books Looking for Luck and The Microscope, and the essay collections To Make a Prairie and Women, Animals and Vegetables, has added another fine poetry collection to her volume of work. She's all over the map with this one, from country New Hampshire to urban Boston, from Jewish agnosticism to convent school, and from spring training to ethnic cleansing, yet most always with an eye on the influence of the church.


From Publishers Weekly
The process referred to in the title?and final?poem of Kumin's 11th collection is the ability to take care of one's business, personal and metaphysical. Here, the poet is aware that her grown children, on their visits home, gently assess her ability in this regard. Kumin is indeed still taking care of the same business that has absorbed her throughout her career: noting the connections among family members; tracking the relations among people, animals and the natural world; and observing the moral responsibility of daily life. Her customary candor and irony are still present, as in her recollection of her youthful religious imagination and the demands her faith might make on her: "I didn't know how little risk I ran/ of being asked to set my people free... I didn't know the patriarchy that spared me/ fame had named me chattell, handmaiden." Although some poems are less substantive than others ("Vignette" is little more than its title suggests), others are memorably strong, particularly the poems about her mother and a number of vivid elegies. In "New Year's Eve 1959," Jack Geiger is recalled dancing with Anne Sexton, "...pecking his head to the beat/ swinging her out on the stalk of his arm/ setting all eight gores of her skirt/ twirling." In "After the Cleansing of Bosnia," Kumin constructs startling and sophisticated images that connect her expatriate daughter as a child and as an adult, the continuing cycle of world sorrow and the mysterious beauty of her rural life. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Kumin, bless her heart, just gets better and better. Since her first volume appeared in 1961, Kumin's poetry has deepened in its involvement with the stuff of life that matters: inner wisdom, the interconnectedness of everything and everyone, the scope and definition of love. These are the kind of poems one wants to share with family and friends, to savor again and again. The first poem, "Letters," consists of seven near-sonnets about the poet's mother; the final line of each sonnet is, with small variation, the first line of the next, moving the reader insistently and compellingly from section to section. Kumin's movement from childhood's close maternal bond to viewing her mother through adolescent scorn to a final shared and friendly adulthood explores themes of universal mother-daughter relationships. Kumin writes vividly of domestic and untamed animals (dogs, horses, bears?"this sow wearing a halo of insistent gnats") and of her garden?even of its failures ("But let me lament my root-maggot-raddled radishes/ my bony and bored red peppers/ that drop their lower leaves like dancehall strippers"). And the music she makes of language within these poems is compelling: "the tick/ and thrust of seeds inside the sleet's sad tune." A high point is the final set of poems, memorials to dead friends, among them poet Anne Sexton. Every poem in this collection is a treasure.?Judy Clarence, California State Univ. Lib., HaywardCopyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New Yorker
Kumin's is a poetry of wide sympathy and tact in which the ecumenical flavor is dominant. . . . This collection is full of generational severance and renewal, and a tart and compassionate irony.


The New Yorker
This collection is full of generational severance and renewal, and a tart and compassionate irony,


From Booklist
Some small women can fool you; they look delicate but possess surprising strength. Kumin's newest collection, her eleventh, is like that. It looks demure and petite, but it packs a wallop. A lover of nature in all its forms, Kumin writes with great sanguinity, seeking clarity at all times, in spite of her gift for subtle metaphor and all of poetry's other pretty ruses. A self-described "restless Jewish agnostic," Kumin knows that most comfort is false, that matters of faith are always open to interpretation. She writes, "I like Bible tales, like Scotch, straight up." She kneels, not before an altar, but in her garden, worships the power of horses and bears, and is grateful for the magic of music. Content in the web of family, Kumin writes poems of supple beauty about her mother, her brave daughter offering succor in Bosnia, and her adored grandchildren, then, in a completely different vein, dazzles us with her vivid sense of history in a highly imaginative poem about Niagara Falls. Donna Seaman

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In these new poems, her eleventh collection, Maxine Kumin expands on the themes that have engaged her most strongly. Family connections resurface as she imagines a letter to her mother, long dead, or assesses the shift of responsibility between generations ("...they still love us who overtake us"). Her dialogue with the natural world - especially with the narrow divide between human and animal - continues, most notably in "Deja Vu," where she pays homage to her personal totem, the bear. Change and the things that never change attract Kumin's attention equally. Whether chronicling the bounty of summer, the cycle of seasons, or memories of youthful parties and lost friends, her voice is wise, clear, and compelling.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

The process referred to in the titleand finalpoem of Kumin's 11th collection is the ability to take care of one's business, personal and metaphysical. Here, the poet is aware that her grown children, on their visits home, gently assess her ability in this regard. Kumin is indeed still taking care of the same business that has absorbed her throughout her career: noting the connections among family members; tracking the relations among people, animals and the natural world; and observing the moral responsibility of daily life. Her customary candor and irony are still present, as in her recollection of her youthful religious imagination and the demands her faith might make on her: "I didn't know how little risk I ran/ of being asked to set my people free... I didn't know the patriarchy that spared me/ fame had named me chattell, handmaiden." Although some poems are less substantive than others ("Vignette" is little more than its title suggests), others are memorably strong, particularly the poems about her mother and a number of vivid elegies. In "New Year's Eve 1959," Jack Geiger is recalled dancing with Anne Sexton, "...pecking his head to the beat/ swinging her out on the stalk of his arm/ setting all eight gores of her skirt/ twirling." In "After the Cleansing of Bosnia," Kumin constructs startling and sophisticated images that connect her expatriate daughter as a child and as an adult, the continuing cycle of world sorrow and the mysterious beauty of her rural life. (July)

Library Journal

Kumin, bless her heart, just gets better and better. Since her first volume appeared in 1961, Kumin's poetry has deepened in its involvement with the stuff of life that matters: inner wisdom, the interconnectedness of everything and everyone, the scope and definition of love. These are the kind of poems one wants to share with family and friends, to savor again and again. The first poem, "Letters," consists of seven near-sonnets about the poet's mother; the final line of each sonnet is, with small variation, the first line of the next, moving the reader insistently and compellingly from section to section. Kumin's movement from childhood's close maternal bond to viewing her mother through adolescent scorn to a final shared and friendly adulthood explores themes of universal mother-daughter relationships. Kumin writes vividly of domestic and untamed animals (dogs, horses, bears"this sow wearing a halo of insistent gnats") and of her gardeneven of its failures ("But let me lament my root-maggot-raddled radishes/ my bony and bored red peppers/ that drop their lower leaves like dancehall strippers"). And the music she makes of language within these poems is compelling: "the tick/ and thrust of seeds inside the sleet's sad tune." A high point is the final set of poems, memorials to dead friends, among them poet Anne Sexton. Every poem in this collection is a treasure.Judy Clarence, California State Univ. Lib., Hayward

BookList - Donna Seaman