The fields of Maxine Kumin's new book of poems, House, Bridge, Fountain, Gate, are fusions of the external and internal worlds a poet must confront. They are her gardens and she as poet has been about naming their flora and fauna. Kumin has said that the poet must be "terribly specific about naming things … naming things that already exist, and making them new just because the names are so specific … bringing them back to the world's attention … dealing with names that are small and overlooked." (p. 108)

Kumin doesn't miss a speck. Her drive for detail and her compulsion to name recall Thoreau. Her poems speak to us of "wet burls of earthworms" ("Up From the Earth") and the "gaggle of gnats" ("Amanda Dreams She Has Died and Gone to the Elysian Fields") that "housekeeps in her" horse's "ears."…

Language is … swept up, as if uttered for the first time "bald as an onion." Kumin includes children's rhymes and games, imbuing them and thereby her poetry with surprises. (p. 109)

Kumin's poems happen in the present tense. Even history occurs now. In "The Death of Uncles" Kumin's metaphor for the presentness of the past is cinema…. There is no past in cinema. Events have the authority of Now.

Kumin speaks of this presence as if possessed by it, telling becomes her mission. In "Life's Work" she says,

           Well, the firm old fathers are dead
           and I didn't come to grief.
           I came to words instead
           to tell the little tale that's left….

The past, things, these are possessors for which, as Kumin suggests in her epithet, the poet is merely voice. (pp. 109-10)

Yet though Kumin is the voice of her world, she is also its creator. The objective and subjective worlds come together as do the body and the spirit…. Kumin as poet is the voice of the spirit, the listening poet and the creator. (p. 110)

Her world is complete in that it incorporates change. She is change and does not regret giving herself up…. The violence of death is not frightening to Kumin. There is nothing of the romancer in her attitude toward nature. (pp. 110-11)

The poet has created herself, placed herself at the center of her poems. Kumin might well understand Alan Dugan's words in his poem, "Variation on a Theme by Stevens,"

               it is absolutely typical to say
               goodbye while saying hello.

The poems of House, Bridge, Fountain, Gate, are "absolutely typical." (p. 111)