Maxine Kumin Summary

Maxine Kumin was born in Philadelphia. She was educated at Radcliffe College, where she received an A.B. in 1946 and an M.A. in 1948. She married Victor M. Kumin in 1946, and they have three children.... Read more

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 successfu... Read more

In the essay below, written in 1977, Kumin surveys her "tribal poems" or "poems of kinship and parenting" and the examines the recurrent theme of parent-child separation. A... Read more

Wakoski is an American educator and poet. In the following review of Nurture, Wakoski—while stating that "Kumin's vision is sometimes limited"—admires the poet... Read more

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." Maxine Kumin labors under ... Read more

In the following excerpt, Baker highly regards Kumin's work and points out that "it is nature that evokes her most passionate, exact writing, and provides a significant model for her to ... Read more

Below, 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 responsibilit... Read more

Wallace is an American educator and poet. In the following excerpt, he lauds The Privilege for its direct language. Maxine Kumin's new poems [in The Privilege] are superb. She hardly makes a mi... Read more

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 t... Read more

In the following interview with Showalter and Smith, Kumin and poet Anne Sexton discuss their twenty-year-old friendship and its influence on their poetry. Max and ITwo immoderate sisters,Two immoder... Read more

Below, Ferrari praises House, Bridge, Fountain, Gate for its "finely crafted structures" and "powerful, personal images." Maxine Kumin won the Pulitzer Prize for her poems ... Read more

Critical Essay by Barbara Fialkowski 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 ar... Read more

Critical Essay by Harvey Curtis Webster Maxine Kumin thinks of Anne Sexton as her "best friend"; they lunched together cheerfully the day before Sexton killed herself. They shared a sens... Read more

Critical Essay by Alicia Ostriker Which of her poetic peers does Maxine Kumin resemble? Unlike Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, she keeps her demons bridled. Unlike Elizabeth Bishop or May Swenson, she i... Read more

Critical Essay by Choice [The Privilege contains] intensely felt poems about deep-reaching family relationships, sharply realized memories of childhood, and odd, ambiguous, and elusive emotional exper... Read more

Critical Essay by David J. Gordon [Maxine Kumin's] powers of observation, interpretation, and phrasing are as strong as Updike's and less marred by moral perversity, excessive symbolism,... Read more

Critical Essay by Jascha Kessler Maxine Kumin's sixth collection of poems is called The Retrieval System, and it is a generous gathering of 35 poems. I would characterize her work as straightfo... Read more

Critical Essay by Julie Stone Peters Maxine Kumin, who has earned a reputation for poems of such bright beatitude that she is an unlikely bard of the geriatric, has entitled her new collection Our Gro... Read more

In the following review, Schulman comments on the themes and style of The Long Approach. Maxine Kumin's poetry is, at its center, profoundly human. Throughout her work, she has displayed a toug... Read more

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. Maxine Kumin is, and for... Read more

In the following review, Reedy examines the eastern American biases and upper-class assumptions that she finds in Women, Animals, and Vegetables. Maxine Kumin writes her stories and essays [in Women, ... Read more

In the following review, Buttel examines the themes, tone, and structure of Connecting the Dots. In this eleventh collection of her poems, [Connecting the Dots] Maxine Kumin continues in a vein that h... Read more

In the following review, Tillinghast surveys Selected Poems, 1960-1990, assessing Kumin's contributions to “nature” poetry. This selection of work [Selected Poems, 1960-1990] by M... Read more

In the following review, St. Andrews assesses Selected Poems within the context of Kumin's career. Back in the good old days when Maxine Kumin won the Pulitzer Prize for Up Country (1973), bein... Read more

In the following positive review, Barrington examines the appeal of Always Beginning and Inside the Halo and Beyond. I recently had the pleasure of re-reading Virginia Woolf's essay, “Ho... Read more

In the following excerpt, Miller offers a positive assessment of In Deep: Country Essays. Nature writing is essential, if only to remind us that there may still exist what Thoreau, perched on Mt. Ktaa... Read more

In the following review, Hunt compares In Deep: Country Essays to Brenda Chamberlain's Tide-Race, emphasizing their thematic similarities. What is waiting on the other side? Maybe nothing speci... Read more

In the following excerpt, Cotter argues that survival is the primary theme of the poems in Nurture. Maxine Kumin in Nurture, her eighth collection of poetry, describes a return to ancestral Austria in... Read more