Maxine Kumin Critical Essay | Critical Essay by William Dickey

Critical Essay by William Dickey

SOURCE: "Revelations and Homilies," in Poetry, Vol. XCIX, No. 2, November, 1961, pp. 124-29.

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."

[Maxine Kumin] defines her intention and accomplishment in a few lines from "The Moment Clearly":

Write, saying this much clearly:
Nearly all, this is nearly all,
The small sounds of growing, the impress
Of unarrested time, raising
The prized moment.

The realizations [of Halfway] are small, but they become important by reason of the care and precision with which they are expressed. Picking up her book and looking at the first poem, one might suppose that the images were going to be arbitrary. "Isosceles of knees" the poem starts, but it goes on "my boys and...
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