It's hard to know what to say about Maxine Kumin's new volume ["House, Bridge, Fountain, Gate"]. It suffers from a disease of similes: children "naked as almonds," kisses "like polka dots," a corset spread out "like a filleted fish," someone "patient as an animal," a visit "as important as summer," chromosomes "tight as a chain gang," and genes "like innocent porters" all inhabit one poem, and the disease (one shared with Anne Sexton) becomes mortal as the book continues. The poems talk about family, about living in Kentucky, about horses; and they have a cheerful will to make the best of things, to make things grow, to save things from frost, to take lessons from nature. There is something admirable about this as an attitude, but the whimsy in Kumin gets in my way, the spunkiness of "the survival artist" finally cloys. In "A Time for the Eating...