Where I Live: New & Selected Poems 1990-2010
A representative selected volume gathering Maxine Kumin's poems from 1990 to 2010.
Work Information
A collected volume that gathers a voice meant to be read across decades.
A retrospective selection that gathers memory, nature, and the textures of lived experience.
Book Information
- Publisher
- W W Norton & Co Inc
- Published
- 2010-04-12
- Pages
- 235 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 16.76 x 2.29 x 24.38 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9780393076493
- ISBN-10
- 0393076490
- Price
- 10969 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Literature & Fiction/Poetry/American
A collection of poems from the Pulitzer Prize-winning former poet laureate of the United States, including poems from five of her past 17 books, and including 23 new poems that reflect on the author's farm life and poets of the past.
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.
Reviews
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A Great Book for "Slow Reading" Practice!
Relax. Pick a favorite spot in your home or garden, preferably a seat by a window opening onto a woodsy or garden scene. Or go outdoors and sit down, not on a chair, but on the grass or a stump or a rock. It would be nice if it's sunny, but overcast with a threat of showers will do, too. Now open Maxine Kumin's "Where I live: New & Selected Poems 1990-2010" and let her soft lines and softer imagery make you human (that is to say, a part of nature) again. Maxine Kumin's subtle uses of rhyme, rhythm and modified poetic forms such as the sonnet and villanelle support her revelations about how extraordinary ordinary living can be. How wonderful it is to be alive. How dangerous to be human. Sometimes how incredibly sad. But always, even in her darkest thoughts on how savage we can be as a species - even to our own kind - there is redemption through our ability to learn, to regret, to feel shame. Kumin's language is clear, her phrasing simple, and her imagery vibrant. Now in her 85th year, she writes with a spiritual vitality that only comes through having experienced many losses and great loves - and having gained wisdom through them. Or, as she puts it, in life "Nothing makes up for losing, though love is a welcome guest." And when you finish this book, order her "Selected Poems: 1960-1990."
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Kumin's poetry, and Kumin, improves with age
I wanted to choose the best poem in this book of poetry "Where I Live, New & Selected Poems 1990-2010," to illustrate how much I admire and love Kumin's poetry. I open the book at random and I read "The Chambermaids in the Marriott at Midmorning," and declare it the best. Then the page accidently flips to the previous poem, "Remarkable Women: An Apostrophe" and I vote for this one. Open the book anywhere at random and her poetry grabs you -- how about "Praise Be" the story of birthing a foal? Kumin is a horsewoman -- and you are there with her kneeling beside the mare. This book will be at my bedside forever.
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Two cents
The absorption of poetry is visceral, right? Personal opinion at that level shouldn't really be expressed, so I'll tread lightly here. I treasure Kumin's work, and most especially her books The Retrieval System, and The Long Approach, but I got a more-than-vague feeling that this new collection, though it spans more than a decade, nevertheless contains less-than-stellar Kumin, that it was presented just to get something out there again for the public to read. I hope that's not true yet it doesn't lessen my thorough pleasure in her work generally. Perhaps you'll get more from this book than I did.
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great book, supreme;y human
Maxine Kumin loved her life, loved her animals and had the gift of a poet unsurpassed in her lifetime. A book to be read over and over.
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Must read.
Maxine observes her world deeply and as deeply communicates it to us through her poetry. I was flagging poems that I liked in the book and ended up with a forest of post-its. She writes on such a wide variety of subjects so well. The book is simply packed with good poetry. Nice to have in the house.