In this extraordinarily lyrical overview of three decades of poems, Maxine Kumin delights the reader's ear again and again, especially in her ability to hear the music of nature. Consider, for instance, "In the Pea Patch": "These as they clack in the wind / saying castanets, saying dance with me, / saying do me, dangle their intricate / nuggety scrota." The melodic flow of the lines does a lot of poetic work for Kumin, reinforcing the poem's thematic celebration of nature's seductiveness and inherent eroticism. These are very beautiful, very knowing poems.


From Library Journal
A pastoral poet who was strongly influenced by friend and mentor Anne Sexton, Kumin is quite simply one of the very best poets writing today. The present collection represents a lifetime (until now) of Kumin's work and includes selections from all her published volumes, dating from her earliest volume Halfway (1961) to Nurture (LJ 3/1/89), although it excludes Closing the Ring (1984), which was published in a limited edition. The reader can move slowly, meanderingly, deliciously through the stages of Kumin's poetic life, from the young woman who writes, "My bones drank water; water fell/ through all my doors. I was the well" through the pastoral years of farm life ("The doomed cattle, wearing/ intelligent smiles, turn.") to her fierce 1980s dedication to wildlife conservation and animal welfare. One could only wish that Kumin had included a few poems from her wonderful 1996 volume, Connecting the Dots (LJ 6/15/96). But she gives us a peek at an apparently unpublished group of poems called Joppa Diary, which seems to have been written sometime in the late 1960s. Feeling a compelling connection to far-off troubles, she writes poems with near-hidden hints of violence: "Reading late,/ last-awake in the country,/ I think I hear burned babies screaming,/ screaming in the basswood by my window." Very highly recommended.?Judy Clarence, California State Univ. Lib., HaywardCopyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review, Richard Tillinghurst
A welcome addition to any poetry library.


The New York Times
This collection by a versatile elegist and observer of nature features vivid poems that are, refreshingly, about something. Many tell stories that serve to preserve her family's history. Last year [1997], Richard Tillinghast called the book "a welcome addition to any poetry library."


From Booklist
It's always good to have a solid collection of selected poems by a living, still prolific poet. Kumin has published 11 volumes of poetry, including her most recent, Connecting the Dots , and now the best poems of nine of her earlier books are safely preserved between the covers of this gratifyingly lush and personable volume. Kumin writes about nature with the same vibrant curiosity and intimacy that warms her poems about her family and about working on her New Hampshire farm. Matters of spirituality, of free-floating faith inspired by the wonder of life itself, as well as mixed feelings about traditional Judaism, flow in and out of Kumin's poems, creating a poignant and resonant refrain. A warm, dramatic, and sometimes teasing storyteller, Kumin often turns her inner eye on the past, imagining life in distant places and times, considering old answers to eternal questions, and composing new interpretations full of shrewd observations, wisdom, and joy. Donna Seaman


The New York Times Book Review, Richard Tillinghast
This selection of work by Maxine Kumin from a 30-year writing career will be a welcome addition to any poetry library. Her poems bracingly remind us of several enduring virtues valued by anyone who reads verse for pleasure. First ... Kumin is neither a full-time "formalist" nor a practitioner of the monotonous free-verse "plain style" ... Second, her poems are about something.


Publishers Weekly
"...The evolution and inherent integrity of Kumin's poetry, wise, generous, and passionate, is deftly captured in this forceful selection."


Book Description
Gathered from nine collections representing three decades of work, these poems are newly available in a rich and varied volume from a poet whose "certain voice and command of her craft free her to actually look at the world and reconnect us to it."--San Francisco Chronicle. Whether writing about the labor of love that is her New Hampshire farm, about family connections, or turning a perceptive eye to a contemplation of the natural world, Kumin's voice is full of strength and grace at once wise and compelling.


Card catalog description
Gathered from nine collections representing three decades of work, these poems - newly available in a rich and varied volume celebrate the growth of a major artist. Since the publication of her first book of poetry, Halfway, Maxine Kumin has been powerfully and fruitfully engaged in the "stuff of life that matters": family, friendship, the bond between the human and natural world, and the themes of loss and survival.


About the Author
Maxine Kumin lives on a farm in central New Hampshire. She has published eleven volumes of poetry, as well as novels, short stories, and essays. A consultant for the Library of Congress and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1973), she is also a chancellor of the American Academy of Poets.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Gathered from nine collections representing three decades of work, these poems - newly available in a rich and varied volume celebrate the growth of a major artist. Since the publication of her first book of poetry, Halfway, Maxine Kumin has been powerfully and fruitfully engaged in the "stuff of life that matters": family, friendship, the bond between the human and natural world, and the themes of loss and survival.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Testifying to the generous contribution that Kumin's perceptive, distinctive voice has made to contemporary American poetry, this balanced volume traces 30 years of the 1973 Pulitzer Prize winner's work. Drawn from 10 collections (the dates of which are regrettably omitted), the works map Kumin's terrain, which is the shared spheres of human and animal life. Kumin's unsentimental affinity for animals has been her divining rod for locating and observing the natural world's seemingly inexhaustible beauty and mankind's terrifying willingness to destroy it: "Bombs and grenades, the newly disappeared,/ a kidnapped ear, go unrecorded/ but the foals flutter inside/ warm wet bags that carry them/ eleven months in the dark." Considering moral questions of privilege and suffering ("Pulling the garden I always think/ of starving to death"), she dismisses ecological politics and lets go organized religion, acknowledging with dry humor that: "Having never acceded to an initial coming/ I hold out no hope for a second/ let alone this bland vision of mail-order angels...." Her hope, like her poetry, takes nature as its source of grace, strength and renewal. Solid craft supports Kumin's plain style: surprising imagery, such as "chromosomes tight as a chain gang," and recurring reflections about suicide mark her close personal and working relationship with Anne Sexton. The evolution and inherent integrity of Kumin's poetry, wise, generous and passionate, is deftly captured in this forceful selection.

Library Journal

A pastoral poet who was strongly influenced by friend and mentor Anne Sexton, Kumin is quite simply one of the very best poets writing today. The present collection represents a lifetime (until now) of Kumin's work and includes selections from all her published volumes, dating from her earliest volume Halfway (1961) to Nurture (LJ 3/1/89), although it excludes Closing the Ring (1984), which was published in a limited edition. The reader can move slowly, meanderingly, deliciously through the stages of Kumin's poetic life, from the young woman who writes, "My bones drank water; water fell/ through all my doors. I was the well" through the pastoral years of farm life ("The doomed cattle, wearing/ intelligent smiles, turn.") to her fierce 1980s dedication to wildlife conservation and animal welfare. One could only wish that Kumin had included a few poems from her wonderful 1996 volume, Connecting the Dots (LJ 6/15/96). But she gives us a peek at an apparently unpublished group of poems called Joppa Diary, which seems to have been written sometime in the late 1960s. Feeling a compelling connection to far-off troubles, she writes poems with near-hidden hints of violence: "Reading late,/ last-awake in the country,/ I think I hear burned babies screaming,/ screaming in the basswood by my window." -- Judy Clarence, California State Univ. Lib., Hayward

Library Journal