Where I Live: New & Selected Poems 1990-2010 - Hardcover

Kumin, Maxine

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393076490 ISBN 13: 9780393076493

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010

Synopsis

“The power that Kumin draws from and brings to literature is potent and seemingly inexhaustible.”―Booklist

Here is a landmark collection celebrating the remarkable range of Maxine Kumin, one of America’s greatest living poets. Where I Live gathers poems from five previous books, together with twenty-three new poems that pay homage to Kumin’s farm life and also to poets of the past.

from “The Taste of Apple”
     I could hardly see as he hoisted the great swaying body aloft
     and bore it across the road to the hole and in the cold dark I poured
     a libation of apple juice for the earth to welcome his corpse―
     some drops spilled on his chestnut flank and some dribbled
     on his cheek and splashed onto his yellow teeth as he lay
     deep on one side and my hand shook―I could hardly see―
     rocking my grief back and forth over this kind death
     the taste of apple wasting in his mouth.

About this title

About the Author:

Maxine Kumin (1925―2014), a former U.S. poet laureate, was the author of nineteen poetry collections as well as numerous works of fiction and nonfiction. Her awards included the Pulitzer Prize, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Aiken Taylor Award, the Poet’s Prize, and the Harvard Arts and Robert Frost medals.

From Booklist:

So bountiful a poet is Pultizer Prize winner Kumin, she has put together her second selected collection, which combines poems from her last five collections with a harvest of glowing new work. Farm and family life in New Hampshire are Kumin’s wellsprings, while her lexicon is built out of the names of plants, rocks, trees, birds, and animals. Kumin favors couplets for their parallels and opposites, but whatever form she chooses, her vital rhythms match a horse’s canter, a human’s stride. She looks to animals for wisdom, from a dog’s delight “in the moment” as opposed to our constant worries about the past and the future, to an old, ailing broodmare who turns suddenly young again in the presence of a companionable gelding. Kumin is earthy and hands-on but hardly rustic as she jets off to Bulgaria and Bangkok; keenly parses Coleridge, Wordsworth, and the women who suffered their obsessions; and decisively critiques Bush-era torture and lies. But Kumin always circles back to the giving land, the clasp of family, and her bedrock belief in the power of art. --Donna Seaman

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0393076490
• ISBN 13: 9780393076493
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256