Maxine Kumin Criticism
Maxine Kumin, an acclaimed American poet and novelist, skillfully intertwines the personal with the universal, exploring themes of memory, survival, and the intricate relationship between humanity and nature. Born in Philadelphia and educated at Radcliffe College, Kumin's literary journey began in earnest after she joined a poetry workshop with John Clellon Holmes, leading to a pivotal friendship with poet Anne Sexton. This relationship was instrumental in her development as a writer, contributing to the depth and sensitivity that characterize her work. Her debut poetry collection, Halfway, published in 1961, marked the beginning of a prolific career distinguished by its technical mastery and emotional resonance.
Kumin's later works, such as The Long Approach and Nurture, delve into themes of women's interior lives, nature, and ecological concerns, as emphasized by critics Grace Schulman, Diana Hume George, and James Finn Cotter. Her Pulitzer Prize-winning collection Up Country is celebrated for its pastoral elegance, while The Retrieval System, influenced by Sexton's death, provides a poignant meditation on loss, as explored by Sybil P. Estess. Her essays, compiled in In Deep: Country Essays, further showcase her exploration of rural life and her deep connection with the environment, earning praise from critics like William Dieter and Peg Padnos.
Despite the acclaim, Kumin's work has, intriguingly, attracted less scholarly attention than her contributions might warrant. Nevertheless, her impact on American literature is undeniable, with collections such as Looking for Luck offering insights into human and natural connections, as analyzed by Henri Cole. Her poetry, adeptly capturing New England life, is lauded for its ability to enhance the reader's perception of familiar scenes, as noted by Ralph J. Mills. Critics like Diana Hume George explore her ongoing examination of loss and survival, while Diane Wakoski defends her metaphoric power amid critiques of her social commentary.
Kumin’s work, blending vivid narratives with cultural reflections, remains influential for its intense personal insight and exploration of the human condition. Her collection Our Ground Time Here Will Be Brief is noted for its mature treatment of aging and mortality, presenting these themes with an assured voice, as discussed by Julie Stone Peters. Her ability to transform personal experiences into universal themes, praised by Monroe K. Spears and described in Barbara Fialkowski's critique of House, Bridge, Fountain, Gate, cements Kumin's place as a significant voice in contemporary literature. Despite some criticisms regarding sentimentality or stylistic choices, her works continue to resonate for their authenticity and keen observation of the natural world, as noted by Philip Booth and Harvey Curtis Webster. Kumin's legacy endures through her compassionate and observant lens, capturing life's transient beauty and the moral complexities of human existence.
Contents
- Principal Works
- Kumin, Maxine (Vol. 5)
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Kumin, Maxine (Vol. 164)
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Review of The Long Approach
(summary)
In the following review, Schulman comments on the themes and style of The Long Approach, noting that Maxine Kumin's poetry is, at its center, profoundly human, displaying a tough-minded, unsentimental compassion for animals and portraying men and women with generous regard and an acute eye for common virtues and moral aspirations.
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In Deep: Country Essays
(summary)
In the following review, Dieter praises Kumin's exploration of the rural experience in In Deep: Country Essays.
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In Deep: Country Essays
(summary)
In the following review, Padnos outlines the major themes of In Deep: Country Essays, focusing on Kumin's daily routine and her relationship with her horses.
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Out Far and In Deep
(summary)
In the following excerpt, Miller offers a positive assessment of In Deep: Country Essays.
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Review of In Deep: Country Essays
(summary)
In the following review, Christophersen contrasts In Deep: Country Essays with Wendell Berry's Home Economics, highlighting the respective strengths and weaknesses of each.
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Hewing Our Creative Time
(summary)
In the following review, Hunt compares In Deep: Country Essays to Brenda Chamberlain's Tide-Race, emphasizing their thematic similarities.
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Review of Nurture
(summary)
In the following review, George highlights the environmental themes in Nurture, noting a movement in Kumin's verse toward global and ecological issues.
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Poetry Travels
(summary)
In the following excerpt, Cotter argues that survival is the primary theme of the poems in Nurture.
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Review of Nurture
(summary)
In the following review, Cole offers a positive assessment of Nurture, praising Kumin's “affectionately modest demeanor.”
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Creature Comforts
(summary)
In the following review, George explores the major themes of Looking for Luck, situating them in the context of Kumin's career. With Looking for Luck, her tenth volume of poetry, Maxine Kumin joins the Norton stable of writers. For decades she has written about the connections between humanity and the rest of the folk who inhabit the world. In Looking for Luck she continues this and other themes—death and loss, family and legacy, how to survive devastation and celebrate life.
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Ecstasy and Irony
(summary)
In the following excerpt, Baker praises Kumin's achievement in Looking for Luck, focusing on the rhetorical schemes and aesthetics of simplicity that inform her poetry.
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Ranches of Isolation
(summary)
In the following excerpt, Wilhelmus evaluates Women, Animals, and Vegetables in terms of the relationship between isolation and the creative process.
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Review of Women, Animals, and Vegetables
(summary)
In the following review, Reedy examines the eastern American biases and upper-class assumptions that she finds in Women, Animals, and Vegetables.
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Poetry Chronicle
(summary)
In the following excerpt, McDowell considers the honest intimacy of Connecting the Dots. Maxine Kumin's eleventh book of poetry, Connecting the Dots, will do nothing to diminish her considerable reputation. Here is a remarkable journey. The most talented survivor of the generation of self-destructive poets (Berryman, Jarrell, Lowell, Plath, Sexton), Kumin has lived long enough, and written well enough, to achieve that most elusive, coveted prize: composing one's best poems in the latter stage of one's life. She has written wiser, more generous, and mature poems than any of her long-departed peers. Especially in the poems of the last ten years, Kumin has grown into the first rank of American poets.
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Sentimental Journey
(summary)
In the following review, Buttel examines the themes, tone, and structure of Connecting the Dots. In this eleventh collection of her poems, Maxine Kumin continues in a vein that has become familiar to her readers. These poems do not bristle with avant garde initiatives (nor should we require them to). The satisfactions come, rather, from attending to the accounts of a humane and intelligent observer whose love for children, family members, dogs, bears, and horses is boundless. Her heart quickens for the afflicted, the lost, and those victimized by hate and violence. At the same time, she admires skill, expertise, and order, as in the performance of music, the making of jam, and the building of the bridge at Niagara Falls in 1848—or, as indicated in the title poem of this volume, the ability to connect the dots, to organize the details of everyday existence, and, further, by implication, to take responsibility in the course of time and change for shaping one's life. Kumin reveals much about herself without being searingly confessional. She has cultivated a colloquial ease that fits smoothly into loosely formal patterns. Parallel to this stylistic interweaving, and one of the chief distinguishing marks of her verse, is the juxtaposing of seemingly trivial and anecdotal details with more serious preoccupations. Her voice is thoughtful, open, wryly amused at times, and often wise. When ironic, she is more playful than caustic.
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Review of Connecting the Dots
(summary)
In the following excerpt, Kitchen commends the spirit of Connecting the Dots, praising Kumin's rejuvenation and urgency in such familiar themes as nature, survival, and memory.
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Natural Virtues
(summary)
In the following review, Tillinghast surveys Selected Poems, 1960-1990, assessing Kumin's contributions to “nature” poetry.
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Review of Connecting the Dots
(summary)
In the following review, Howard attributes the thematic coherence and “eclectic curiosity” of Connecting the Dots and Selected Poems to Kumin's “remarkable” consistency with the themes, techniques, and ironic perspectives that distinguish her career.
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Review of Selected Poems, 1960-1990
(summary)
In the following review, St. Andrews assesses Selected Poems within the context of Kumin's career.
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Charmed Life
(summary)
In the following positive review, Barrington examines the appeal of Always Beginning and Inside the Halo and Beyond.
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Review of The Long Approach
(summary)
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Kumin, Maxine (Vol. 13)
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Helen Vendler
(summary)
In the following essay, Helen Vendler critiques Maxine Kumin's "House, Bridge, Fountain, Gate" for its excessive use of similes and whimsical tone, suggesting that Kumin's strength lies in her lighter, less ambitious poems rather than her serious attempts which often lack an effective voice.
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Barbara Fialkowski
(summary)
In the following essay, Barbara Fialkowski examines Maxine Kumin's House, Bridge, Fountain, Gate, highlighting how Kumin's poetry intricately fuses the external and internal worlds through precise naming, celebrates the present tense as a narrative force, and explores themes of change and the poet's role as both creator and observer.
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Maxine Kumin's Survival
(summary)
In the following essay, Philip Booth argues that Maxine Kumin's poetry, particularly in The Retrieval System, exemplifies a deeply compassionate and resilient exploration of memory and survival, where personal and family history, intertwined with the realities of rural life, are honored through precise, metaphor-rich language and a commitment to conservation.
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Harvey Curtis Webster
(summary)
In the following essay, Harvey Curtis Webster examines Maxine Kumin's poetry, highlighting her focus on personal experience, her use of vivid similes, and occasional echoes of Frost's style, while noting her divergence from social protest themes and her ability to transform personal experiences into universal ones.
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Helen Vendler
(summary)
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Kumin, Maxine (Winokur)
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A Poet Who Needs His Poem
(summary)
In the following essay, Richard Moore examines Maxine Kumin's poetry, noting her affiliation with the Bishop-Lowell-Sexton school and highlighting her ability to craft evocative childhood imagery, while also critiquing the sometimes distracting wit and occasional lack of focus found in some of her works.
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Choice
(summary)
The critic praises Maxine Kumin's The Privilege for its emotionally rich exploration of family, childhood, and adulthood, highlighting her distinctive poetic voice and skillful use of the sonnet form, drawing comparisons to Millay for her precise natural imagery and arguing for the collection's inclusion in American poetry anthologies.
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Hallie and Sukey's Hang-ups
(summary)
In the following essay, Mary Carter critiques Maxine Kumin's novel for its focus on private anguish and personal neuroses, arguing that while Kumin's prose is inventive and intelligent, this emphasis ultimately limits the novel's broader thematic impact.
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Some Recent Novels: Styles of Martyrdom
(summary)
In the following essay, David J. Gordon explores Maxine Kumin's novel The Passions of Uxport, highlighting its themes of mortality, sexual loss, and moral commitment while critiquing its portrayal of psychoanalysis and its ambitious characterization of Dr. Zemstvov.
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The Nightmare Factory
(summary)
In the following essay, the critic praises Maxine Kumin's The Nightmare Factory for its depth, emotional control, and seamless use of formal devices, highlighting her ability to explore themes of birth, decay, familial relationships, and personal affliction with insightful imagery and detail.
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Maxine Kumin: 'The Retrieval System'
(summary)
In the following essay, Jascha Kessler describes Maxine Kumin's The Retrieval System as a collection of poems reflecting a mature, contemplative, and domestic life, rich with rural and personal themes, where the poetry elegizes life's inevitable losses and experiences with a focus on authenticity and simplicity.
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A Gathering of Poets, Voices from Four Decades: 'Our Ground Time Here Will Be Brief: New and Selected Poems' and 'Why Can't We Live Together Like Civilized Human Beings?'
(summary)
In the following essay, Monroe K. Spears argues that Maxine Kumin's poetry and prose offer a rich tapestry of personal and historical significance, highlighted by autobiographical depth and an engaging variety of forms, demonstrating her skillful blend of vivid personal narratives with broader cultural reflections and earning her an essential place in contemporary literature.
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Sprinting Toward the Finish Line
(summary)
In the following essay, Julie Stone Peters examines Maxine Kumin's poetry collection Our Ground Time Here Will Be Brief, highlighting how Kumin's confrontation with aging and mortality adds depth to her work, while also critiquing her susceptibility to sentimentality and the limitations of her language in the face of time's passage.
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Mature Fruits
(summary)
In the following essay, Clara Claiborne Park examines Maxine Kumin's poetry and fiction, arguing that they explore themes of aging, mortality, and familiar domestic life, while also hinting at underlying darkness and existential speculation, ultimately revealing a world confined by class and habit yet profoundly introspective and resonant.
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Memory and Attachment
(summary)
In the following essay, Alicia Ostriker explores the thematic richness of Maxine Kumin's poetry, highlighting her distinctive style characterized by sensory detail, emotional depth, and her exploration of human and animal relationships, emphasizing her attachment to memory and mortality through vividly rendered images and insightful storytelling.
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Dana Gioia
(summary)
In the following essay, Dana Gioia argues that while Maxine Kumin's poetry, especially in "Our Ground Time Here Will Be Brief," captures engaging characters and vivid scenes with a clear and skillful use of language, it ultimately lacks lyrical depth and memorable use of language, limiting its artistic impact.
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A Poet Who Needs His Poem
(summary)
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Kumin, Maxine
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Criticism
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Revelations and Homilies
(summary)
Dickey was an American educator and poet who served as the Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress, 1966-1968. In the following review of Halfway, he comments that "Kumin is more successful in personal poems than in those which attempt public stances."
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Weights and Measures
(summary)
Stuart admires Kumin's control of her subject matter, the domain of childhood, in The Privilege.
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Down from the Forked Hill Unsullied
(summary)
Wallace is an American educator and poet. In the following excerpt, he lauds The Privilege for its direct language.
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One for Life, One for Death
(summary)
In the review below, she compares Up Country to Sylvia Plath's Winter Trees, remarking on the similarities and differences between the poets' writings and concluding that "one book affirms life; the other affirms death."
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A review of Up Country
(summary)
In the following review, Howes praises the 'country ways' of Up Country. Maxine Kumin is a poet attuned to country ways. She is heir to a tradition of pastoral poetry that reaches back through Robert Frost and Thomas Hardy all the way to its rural beginnings in Theocritus. Nature poetry, she comes to tell us, is alive and well and sinking its taproots in New Hampshire soil.
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A review of Up Country
(summary)
Mills is an American poet who has written several critical studies on contemporary poets. In the following excerpt, he congratulates Kumin for her 'marvelously etched, intricately textured pictures' of New England in Up Country.
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Maxine Kumin with Anne Sexton and Elaine Showalter and Carol Smith
(summary)
In the following interview with Showalter and Smith, Kumin and Sexton discuss the profound influence of their friendship on their poetic development, highlighting their unique styles, the challenges of working with John Holmes, and their collaborative process of critiquing each other's work through phone conversations, emphasizing mutual respect for their distinct poetic voices.
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Maxine Kumin with Martha George Meek (interview date 1975)
(summary)
In the following interview, Maxine Kumin, in conversation with Martha George Meek, explores the themes of isolation, self-sufficiency, and the process of discovering order through writing poetry, likening it to a religious experience, while emphasizing the solitary nature of the writing profession and the confessional aspects of her work.
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A review of House, Bridge, Fountain, Gate
(summary)
Below, Ferrari praises House, Bridge, Fountain, Gate for its "finely crafted structures" and "powerful, personal images."
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Maxine Kumin with students (interview date 1977)
(summary)
In the following interview, Maxine Kumin discusses her poetic process, emphasizing the influence of everyday life experiences, the importance of writing drafts, and the balancing act between personal honesty and poetic tact, while offering guidance to aspiring poets through her own experiences with workshops and revisions.
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Kumin on Kumin: The Tribal Poems
(summary)
In the essay below, written in 1977, Kumin surveys her 'tribal poems' or 'poems of kinship and parenting' and examines the recurrent theme of parent-child separation.
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Past Halfway: The Retrieval System
(summary)
In the following essay, she analyzes the ways in which Kumin faces loss in The Retrieval System. The Retrieval System, Maxine Kumin's sixth book of poetry, is about surviving loss. It confirms things many of us already knew about its author, a just-past-middle-age, increasingly refined, non-suicidal poet. The main value in both her life and her poetry is preservation. That which is retrieved in her system may be the simple life of fruits and vegetables or it may be something in her unconscious. But in The Retrieval System the things that most need to be recovered, savored and saved are the memories of those no longer within the poet's physical reach. This is the primary kind of loss with which Kumin, in her mid-fifties, lives.
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Earth Mother, Earth Daughter
(summary)
In the following review of Nurture, Wakoski—while stating that "Kumin's vision is sometimes limited"—admires the poet's Earth poetry, especially "the wonderful images, that turn into big metaphors."
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Poetry Chronicle: Hunger, Hope, and Nurture: Poetry from Michael Ryan, the Chinese Democratic Movement, and Maxine Kumin
(summary)
In the following excerpt, Harris commends Kumin's intimate and tender poems in Nurture. He states that with this volume the poet is seeking "atonement."
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'Keeping Our Working Distance': Maxine Kumin's Poetry of Loss and Survival
(summary)
In the following essay, George examines how Kumin confronts the loss of friends and family and her own mortality in her later poetry.
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Connecting the Dots
(summary)
The reviewer notes themes similar to those in Kumin's previous work, in particular examining relationships among people, animals and nature; and observing the moral responsibility of daily life. Kumin is 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, particularly in her recollection of her youthful religious imagination. Some poems are less substantive than others, while others are memorably strong, particularly the poems about her mother and vivid elegies.
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Revelations and Homilies
(summary)
- Criticism
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Criticism
- Further Reading