Maxine Kumin
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Maxine Kumin (b. 1925) is an American poet and author.
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[edit] Life
Born and raised in Philadelphia, Kumin, the daughter of Jewish parents, attended Catholic kindergarten and lower schools. She received her BA. in 1946 and her M.A. in 1948 from Radcliffe College. In June 1946 she married Victor Kumin, an engineering consultant; they have two daughters and a son. In 1957, 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 1974. Kumin taught English from 1958 to 1961 and 1965 to 1968 at Tufts University; from 1961 to 1963 she was a scholar at the Radcliffe Institute for Independent Study. She has also held appointments as a visiting lecturer and poet in residence at many American colleges and universities. Since 1976, she and her husband have lived on a farm in Warner, New Hampshire, where they breed Arabian and quarter horses.
[edit] Career
Kumin's many awards include the Eunice Tietjens Memorial Prize from Poetry (1972), the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1973) for Up Country, the Aiken Taylor Prize, the Poets' Prize, an American Academy and Institute of Arts a Letters Award for excellence in literature (1980), an Academy of American Poets fellowship (1986), the 1999 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, and six honorary degrees. In 1981-1982, she served as the poetry consultant to the Library of Congress.
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 currently teaches poetry in New England College's Low-Residency MFA Program.
[edit] Trivia
Kumin is believed to be the last person to have seen Anne Sexton alive, having had lunch with Sexton the day of her death, October 4, 1974.
[edit] Bibliography
This list of publications was provided by Maxine Kumin. She has also written a number of children's books.
Publications: Poetry
- Jack and Other New Poems, W.W. Norton Co., 2005
- Bringing Together: Uncollected Early Poems 1958-1988, W.W. Norton Co., 2003
- The Long Marriage, W.W.Norton Co., 2001, cloth, paper; finalist for the Lenore Marshall Award of the Academy of American Poets, 2002
- Selected Poems 1960-1990, W.W. Norton Co., 1997 cloth; paper ; New York Times notable book of the year
- Connecting the Dots, W.W. Norton Co.,1996 cloth, paper
- Looking for Luck, W.W. Norton Co., 1992 cloth; paper
- Nurture, Viking/ Penguin 1989, o. o. p.
- The Long Approach, Viking /Penguin, 1985-6, o.o.p.
- Our Ground Time Here Will Be Brief, New and Selected Poems, Viking/Penguin 1982, o. o. p.
- The Retrieval System, Viking/Penguin, 1978, o.o.p.
- House, Bridge, Fountain, Gate, Viking/ Penguin, 1975, o.o.p.
- Up Country, Harper & Row, 1972, o.o.p.
- The Nightmare Factory, Harper & Row, 1970, o.o.p.
- The Privilege, Harper & Row, 1965, o.o.p.
- Halfway, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1961, o.o.p.
Publications: Novels
- Quit Monks or Die (animal rights mystery), Story Line Press, 1999
- The Designated Heir, Viking, 1974, o.o.p.; Andre Deutsch (England) o.o.p.
- The Abduction, Harper & Row, 1971, o.o.p.
- The Passions of Uxport, Harper & Row, 1968, Dell paper, 1969, o.o.p.
- Through Dooms of Love, Harper & Row, 1965; Hamish Hamilton & Gollancz (England), Panther paper, o.o.p.
Publications: Short Stories
- Why Can't We Live Together Like Civilized Human Beings? Viking 1982, o.o.p.
Publications: Essays
- Always Beginning: Essays on a Life in Poetry, Copper Canyon Press, 2000
- Inside the Halo and the Journey Beyond, W. W. Norton Co., 1999
- Women, Animals, and Vegetables: Essays and Stories, Norton, 1994, o.o.p.; Ontario Review Press, paper, 1996
- In Deep: Country Essays, Viking 1987, o.o.p.; Beacon Press 1988, o.o.p.
- To Make a Prairie: Essays on Poets, Poetry and Country Living, University of Michigan Press, 1980 paper
Publications: Critique
- Telling the Barn Swallow: Poets on the Poetry of Maxine Kumin, ed. by Emily Grosholz, University Press of New England, 1997
