Never one to be steered by literary fashion or academic orthodoxy, she has cultivated her clear, intimate, irrepressible poems in the same determined manner she's used to nurture family, farm animals, and her small corner of the earth. A Pulitzer Prize winner and poetry consultant for the Library of Congress, Ms. Kumin is the author of novels, short stories, essays, and 10 volumes of poetry. Co. Checking my shoe size, Ms. Kumin scrounges up a pair of Wellingtons for me, and we head straight for the barn, accompanied by a complement of cats and dogs.
Work takes on a dreamlike rightness when it is rooted in daily practice and profound pleasure.
I begin to feel how the simple moments resonate in her imagination. The literature of our time is richer and more humane for the caretaking of poets like Maxine Kumin. I don't see that kind of depravity in the natural world that I see in the human world. And as kids we had an enormous amount of freedom. That was before anybody worried about children being abducted, sexually abused, or whatever.