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Maxine Kumin

American poet and author

Maxine Kumin (June 6, – February 6, ) was an American poet and author. She was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in –^[1]

Biography

Early years

Maxine Kumin was born Maxine Winokur on June 6, in Philadelphia, the daughter of Jewish parents, and attended a Catholic kindergarten and primary school. She received her B.A. in and her M.A. in from Radcliffe College of Harvard University. In June she married Victor Kumin, a Harvard graduate and engineering consultant; they had three children, two daughters and a son. In , she studied poetry with John Holmes at the Boston Center for Adult Education. There she met Anne Sexton, with whom she started a friendship that continued until Sexton's suicide in Kumin taught English from to and to at Tufts University; from to she was a scholar at the Radcliffe Institute for Independent Study. She also held appointments as a visiting lecturer and poet in residence at many American colleges and universities. From until her death in February , she and her husband lived on a farm in Warner, New Hampshire, where they bred Arabian and quarter horses.^[2]

Career

Kumin's many awards include the Eunice Tietjens Memorial Prize for Poetry (), the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry () for Up Country, in the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry, the Poets' Prize (for Looking for Luck), an American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award for excellence in literature (), an Academy of American Poets fellowship (), the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, and six honorary degrees. In , the Supersisters trading card set was produced and distributed; one of the cards featured Kumin's name and picture.^[3] She was also awarded the Sarah Joseph Hale Award and the Levinson Prize. She has also received a National Endowment for the Arts grant and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets.^[4] In –, she served as the poetry consultant to the Library of Congress. Kumin has been published in Beloit Poetry Journal.

Critics have compared Kumin with Elizabeth Bishop because of her meticulous observations and with Robert Frost, for she frequently devotes her attention to the rhythms of life in rural New England. She has been grouped with confessional poets such as Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath and Robert Lowell. But unlike the confessionalists, Kumin eschews high rhetoric and adopts a plain style. Throughout her career, Kumin has struck a balance between her sense of life's transience and her fascination with the dense physical presence of the world around her. She served as the judge of the Brittingham Prize in Poetry and she selected Patricia Dobler's Talking To Strangers.

She taught poetry in New England College's Low-Residency MFA Program. She was also a contributing editor at The Alaska Quarterly Review. Together with fellow-poet Carolyn Kizer, she first served on and then resigned from the board of chancellors of the Academy of American Poets, an act that galvanized the movement for opening this august body to broader representation by women and minorities.^[5]

In when Kumin was 73 she was almost killed in a horseback-riding accident which broke her neck.^[6]

Kumin, aged 88, died in February at her home in Warner, following a year of failing health.^[7]

Kumin is believed to be the last person to have seen Anne Sexton alive, as the two of them had had lunch the day of Sexton's suicide in

Bibliography

Poetry

Collections

Kumin, Maxine (). Halfway. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.ISBN&#;
The Privilege, Harper & Row,
The Nightmare Factory, Harper & Row, , ISBN&#;
The Abduction, Harper & Row, , ISBN&#;
Up Country, Harper & Row, (illustrated by Barbara Swan)
House, Bridge, Fountain, Gate, Viking/Penguin, , ISBN&#;
The Retrieval System, Viking/Penguin, , ISBN&#;
Our Ground Time Here Will Be Brief, New and Selected Poems, Viking/Penguin , ISBN&#;
The Long Approach, Viking/Penguin, –6, ISBN&#;
Nurture, Viking/Penguin , ISBN&#;
Looking for Luck, W. W. Norton, , ISBN&#;
Connecting the Dots, W. W. Norton, , ISBN&#;
Selected Poems –, W. W. Norton, , ISBN&#;, cloth; paper; New York Times notable book of the year
Maxine Kumin (17 May ). The Long Marriage: Poems. W. W. Norton. pp.&#;71–. ISBN&#;. cloth, paper; finalist for the Lenore Marshall Award of the Academy of American Poets,
Bringing Together: Uncollected Early Poems –, W. W. Norton, , ISBN&#;
Jack and Other New Poems, W. W. Norton, , ISBN&#;
Still to Mow: Poems. W. W. Norton. 2 February pp.&#;68–. ISBN&#;.
Where I Live: New & Selected Poems . W. W. Norton. 12 April ISBN&#;.
And Short the Season, W. W. Norton, , ISBN&#;

List of poems

Title	Year	First published	Reprinted/collected
Xanthopsia		Kumin, Maxine (July 1, ). "Xanthopsia". The New Yorker*. Vol.&#;89, no.&#; p.&#;

Novels

Through Dooms of Love, Harper & Row, ; Hamish Hamilton & Gollancz (England), Panther paper
The Passions of Uxport, Harper & Row, , Dell paper,
The Abduction, Harper & Row, ISBN&#;
The Designated Heir, Viking, ; Andre Deutsch (England) ISBN&#;
Quit Monks or Die (animal rights mystery), Story Line Press, , ISBN&#;

Essays and short story collections

To Make a Prairie: Essays on Poets, Poetry and Country Living, University of Michigan Press, paper ISBN&#;
Why Can't We Live Together Like Civilized Human Beings? Viking ISBN&#;
In Deep: Country Essays, Viking , ISBN&#;; Beacon Press
Women, Animals, and Vegetables: Essays and Stories, Norton, ; Ontario Review Press, paper, ISBN&#;
Telling the Barn Swallow: Poets on the Poetry of Maxine Kumin, ed. by Emily Grosholz, University Press of New England,
Always Beginning: Essays on a Life in Poetry, Copper Canyon Press, , ISBN&#;
Inside the Halo and Beyond: The Anatomy of a Recovery. W. W. Norton. 17 November pp.&#;–. ISBN&#;.
The Roots of Things: Essays. Northwestern University Press. 30 March ISBN&#;.