Maxine Kumin (née Winokur) was born to a Reform Jewish family in Germantown, Pennsylvania. She attended Catholic and public schools before earning a BA and MA from Radcliffe College and married Victor Kumin in 1946 while still a student, and she would have two daughters and a son.
How many poems did Maxine Kumin write?
From 1981–1982, she served as the poetry consultant to the Library of Congress (now called U.S. Poet Laureate). Maxine Kumin is the author of 18 collections of poetry, from her first collection, Halfway, printed in 1961 when she was 36 years old to her final collection, And Short the Season, printed in 2014 after she died at the age of 88.
What does Kumin say about the garden?
In a 2012 interview with recording by Mary Kuechenmeister, Kumin remarked, “The garden has to be attended every day, just as the horses have to be tended to, not just every day, but morning, noon and night. The writing, I think, exerts the same kind of discipline.
How did Susan Kumin and Anne Sexton meet?
While attending the Boston workshops, Kumin met and befriended the poet Anne Sexton. Both homemakers with children when they began their literary careers, they wrote four children’s books together and in general contributed to each other’s development.
What makes Maxine Kumin’s poetry unique?
Booth commented: “The distinctive nature of Maxine Kumin’s present poems derives from the primary fact that she lives in, and writes from, a world where constant (if partial) recovery of what’s ‘lost’ is as sure as the procession of the equinoxes, or as familiar as mucking-out the horses’ daily dung.”
How does Anne Kumin compare herself to Robert Frost?
Booth believed Kumin’s poems “amply show that suffering doesn’t require confession to validate pain,” and that her “mode is memorial rather than confessional.” However, Kumin is most often compared to Robert Frost. The work of both poets shows a close attention to the details of New England rural life.
