Product Description
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. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

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.

Nature and the Unnatural
Maxine Kumin seems like a sweet older woman.Harmless, it would appear.After all, she begins her book of poetry with a focus on nature, and makes insightful observations on little things that are often overlooked.For example, in "Lore", she talks about a book she's read about blue jays, and how many acorns they ingest each season.She describes the oak trees that result from the blue jays losses, but takes notice of an even more interesting thought:who is the person, "an aspiring Ph.D." that actually counts these and compiles such data?It's that little bit of twist, from observing nature to questioning a source that make her unique, and makes you realize this is not a simple collection of pretty words.Most of all, as you continue reading Where I Live, you see that she isn't as harmless as you might suspect.

Her topics vary greatly and her observations are often are anything but sweet.In talking about Iraq, she doesn't back away from revealing the discrepancies between the suffering caused by liberators and a religious leader claiming there is a "spiritual value of suffering".She concludes that the sun comes up, "staining the sky with indifference".She also contrasts the ideals of the Geneva Convention with vice-presidents and Supreme Court justices who engage in what she calls "canned hunting".In "Please Pay Attention as the Ethics Have Changed", she wonders what kind of Humane Society (a word play on "human" society) would permit such cruelty to an animal (or moreso, to a person).From Daniel Pearl's tragic death to contaminated drinking water, she reveals her heart in her words.

She also speaks of stray dogs and abandoned cats with great feeling, and you get the impression that it isn't simply the immediate sadness that she's getting at...she's driving at the attitudes that make people shut their heart up to others.And while sometimes we may stereotype a poet as distant and focused on things beyond real life, she shows she's firmly planted in the here and now.In "The Chambermaids in the Marriot in Midmorning", she finds another life in their chatter:

"Behind my "Do not disturb" sign I go wherever they go
sorely tried by their menfolk, their husbands, lovers or sons,
who have jobs or have lost them, who drink and run around,
who total their cars and are maimed, or lie idle in traction...


I think how static my life is with its careful speeches and classes
and how I admire the women who daily clean up my messes,
who are never done scrubbing..."

The contents are divided into sections: New Poems, Looking for Luck, Connecting the Dots, The Long Marriage, Jack and Other New Poems, and Still to Mow.Simple chores, farm work, famous women authors, childbirth, the Red Sox, misbehaving pets, redemption, corporate greed, and travel all are portrayed as she sees them, not sugar-coated nor politicized.The collection as a whole feels like a book of sage advice from a favored aunt-the feisty one-the one that sometimes says what you don't want to hear but who you listen to anyway.And while they are considered poetry, the verses often read with the detail you'd find in a short story.

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."

"The Poet's Garden"
Many of the poems in Where I Live: New & Selected Poems 1990-2010 take for subjects the author's New Hampshire horse farm and the animals, domesticated and wild, that run about there. "Allegiance to the land is tenderness," Maxine Kumin tells us in "Hay," a poem about cutting and baling the mixed grasses. "Winter's Tale" considers the orange tree that, with aging, bears less fruit. "The Taste of Apple" recounts the putting-down of a horse. In "Lore," statistics about acorns collected by blue jays become a cheeky reminder that someone actually followed birds around to learn their gathering and retrieval habits. Ever the protector of animals, Kumin's "The Whole Hog" will make any meat lover think twice before popping another boneless pork tenderloin into the oven. And "The Brown Mountain" leaves no doubt that "Compost is our future" and will produce "Dirt fit / for the gardens of commoner and king."

Kumin excels in earthy images that draw us into the necessary balances of nature, including life and death. In some of the poems people don't disturb the natural cycle. In others, they are far from respectful. For example, in "Bringing Down the Birds," the question is asked whether, if we could scientifically restock extinct animals such as passenger pigeons, we would "do them all in again."

WHERE I LIVE encompasses a tableau of subjects though. Some ponder questions about predecessor or contemporary poets. One, for instance, is entitled "Czeslaw Milosz Visits the Library of Congress." There are also "Skinnydipping with William Wordsworth" and "Imagining Marianne Moore in the Butterfly Garden." And in one "we see Emily [Dickinson] flamboyant," imagining she had "lived in the 2000s."

Kumin the poet digs into fleshy wounds of wars...and what it is to be Jewish. She finds herself "Looking for Luck in Bangkok." She ruminates over existential questions, asking "And what terror awaits those among us / whose moral priorities are unattached / to Yahweh, Allah, Buddha, Christ." She write verse about her grandson, and she writes verse about suicides of literary luminaries. She remembers her father and her marriage. She even composes three triangle stanzas about "The Victorian Obsession with the Preservation of Hair."

This collection provides breadth and depth of the author's work in the last two decades. Its observations are sometimes caustic or blunt, sometimes smile-inducing, and sometimes cause a tear to well. Kumin's love of embodying the visible and invisible in beautiful or shocking words is matched by her obvious love of nature, those she holds dear, and literature. She offers new insights like a subtle wisp of aroma in some poems. In others, her message is more like the giant stamping through his castle after Jack. Whichever method she employs, Kumin has produced a body of work that is rich, varied, and genuine. It is a lush garden of thought and image.

... Read more

Product Description
Kumin reflects on the process of writing poetry and on life in the country
... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Bear Trail
I love your poem of the bear trail, so narrow
in the woods.. 1 footprint behind the other
.. i especially love that you did not say
'pawprint'..

your poems have humor and joy and unique
visions of life ... Read more

Product Description
Gathered from nine collections representing three decades of work, these poems-newly available here in a rich and varied volume-celebrate the growth of a major artist. Since the publication of her first book of poetry, Halfway, Maxine Kumin has been powerfully and fruitfully engaged in the "stuff of life that matters": family, friendship, the bond between the human and natural worlds, and the themes of loss and survival.Amazon.com Review
In this extraordinarily lyrical overview of three decades ofpoems, Maxine Kumin delights the reader's ear again and again,especially in her ability to hear the music of nature. Consider, forinstance, "In the Pea Patch": "These as they clack inthe wind / saying castanets, saying dance with me, / saying do me,dangle their intricate / nuggety scrota." The melodic flow of thelines does a lot of poetic work for Kumin, reinforcing the poem'sthematic celebration of nature's seductiveness and inherenteroticism. These are very beautiful, very knowing poems. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Absolutely first-rate
If anything, the book that arrived was in BETTER condition than described.This is a first-rate book seller.I wish I could give the seller 6 stars! ... Read more

Product Description
In July 1998, when Maxine Kumin's horse bolted at a carriage-driving clinic, she was not expected to live. Yet, less than a year later, her progress pronounced a miracle by her doctors, she was at work on this journal of her astonishing recovery. She tells of her time "inside the halo," the near-medieval device that kept her head immobile during weeks of intensive care and rehabilitation, of the lasting "rehab" friendships, and of the loving family who always believed she would heal. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Marvellous Max!
Like many of Maxine Kumin's devoted reader/fan/friends, I came to her poetry through Anne Sexton's poetry/life.

However, as wonderful as Sexton's poetry is, and I love Anne Sexton's poetry,Maxine Kumin's poetry and prose can well stand on its own considerable merits.

Inside The Haloisa wonderful, gutsy, thoughtful book.

Having had some "orthopedic trauma" myself, though nowhere as severe as the accident Kumin survived, I can attest to the abundant truth she tells about the frustrations and joys of rehabilitation, and the "tough tenderness" of the best therapists.

Kumin also speaks movingly of how her amazing husband, children, and grandchildren rallied to see her through.

This is a difficult book to write about, because words like "uplifting" have become debased with casual use.

However, I am of the unshakable opinion that all doctors, nurses, therapists, and lovers of great writing would find something real in this fine book.

Inside the Halo and Beyond
Putting thoughts into words is the salvation of many, particularly MaxineKumin, who describes her recovery from paralysis in "Inside the Haloand Beyond." I was recently paralyzed myself, so I keenly identifiedwith the account of her rehabilitation. Yet I felt pangs of jealousybecause she walks again and the chances are nil this will happen to me.

Still, this book deserves an all-star rating for Kumin's eloquent andstarkly honest description of her connections to poetry, literature,current events, international suffering, nature, equestrian riches,gardening, familial and friendly relations. She evokes empapthy andcompassion without resorting to sappy sentiment or references to God. Sheexplains, "My agnosticism eroded eventually to the skeletal remains ofatheism and there I still stand. I'm not sure whether I should envy or pitythe faith of others. Yes, it would be nice to have, but it seems a luxuryof pietism I cannot afford."

Her love of words is eloquent:"I've always been a galloping reader, racing for information, hurtlingpast intervening advertisements or cartoons, breathless and fascinated withlanguage."

It's a fine book.

WHAT NOURISHES
Maxine Kumin has given us a gift."Illness, disability, the specter of permanent damage... are deeply personal, immediate, and terrifying," she writes.Indeed.This chronicle of recovery from a cervical spinal injury sustained after her horse bolted is a courageous foray through the intense first ten months of recovery.

More than a story of pluck and resilience this book delivers joy in its reaffirmation of what nourishes us: loving relationships.Relationships with husband, son, daughters, and friends--both old and newly formed in recovery-- and relationships to the land, to its bounty. It seems impossible for someone so connected to life to ever give up on it easily.Kumin narrates, in journal form, her struggles and how she didn't quit.

Kumin's life unfolds in this book. We see the stoic formed when her adored father "hovered in the doorway" when she was ill as a child; the horse lover who takes "deep pleasure" in seeing her horses in action; the gardener describing cauliflower and broccoli lovingly planted in May from seeds started on living room windowsills; and the poet who says of her farmhouse, "All of my doors are held open by stones."

The mother and wife are here, too. Kumin's daughter, Judith, spends months with her mother. It is comforting to read of a supportive, caring, daughter/mother relationship that flourishes during a time of great stress.Kumin is not afraid to tell us about moments of guilt and despair: "How I feel about my accident is quite simply that I screwed up everybody's life by living through it."

All this is written within a flowing narrative style that is groomed by this writer's cumulative knowledge of what is important in language and life.

Maxine Kumin is one of my favorite poets.I cheered when this well-paced chronicle led to a spring when this writer was finally back in the "peaceful kingdom" of her farm in New Hampshire.I am grateful the author has offered a book that allows us to witness her struggle as she looked inward and reached out.

WHAT NOURISHES
Maxine Kumin has given us a gift."Illness, disability, the specter of permanent damage... are deeply personal, immediate, and terrifying," she writes.Indeed.This chronicle of recovery from acervical spinal injury sustained after her horse bolted is a courageousforay through the intense first ten months of recovery.

More than a storyof pluck and resilience this book delivers joy in its reaffirmation of whatnourishes us: loving relationships.Relationships with husband, son,daughters, and friends--both old and newly formed in recovery-- andrelationships to the land, to its bounty. It seems impossible for someoneso connected to life to ever give up on it easily.Kumin narrates, injournal form, her struggles and how she didn't quit.

Kumin's lifeunfolds in this book. We see the stoic formed when her adored father"hovered in the doorway" when she was ill as a child; the horselover who takes "deep pleasure" in seeing her horses in action;the gardener describing cauliflower and broccoli lovingly planted in Mayfrom seeds started on living room windowsills; and the poet who says of herfarmhouse, "All of my doors are held open by stones."

Themother and wife are here, too. Kumin's daughter, Judith,spends monthswith her mother. It is comforting to read of a supportive, caring,daughter/mother relationship that flourishes during a time of great stress. Kumin is not afraid to tell us about moments of guilt and despair:"How I feel about my accident is quite simply that I screwed upeverybody's life by living through it."

All this is written withina flowing narrative style that is groomed by this writer's cumulativeknowledge of what is important in language and life.

Maxine Kumin is oneof my favorite poets.I cheered when this well-paced chronicle lead to aspring when this writer was finally back in the "peacefulkingdom" of her farm in New Hampshire.I am grateful the author hasoffered a book that allows us to witness her struggle as she looked inwardand reached out.

Wise, upbeat, gorgeously written and utterly inspirational
Pulitzer prize winning poet-naturalist Maxine Kumin chronicles a period of nine months, from the horrible horse-and-carriage accident that left herwith a 5% chance of survival, and an even tinier prospect of ever walkingagain, to the time she is once again able to scramble up steep hills on herfarm in New Hampshire again, albeit with difficulty. Hers is astatistically improbable recovery brought about not just by discipline anddetermination, and certainly not by faith (she is an atheist),but by love-- her family's love of her, and her own love not just for husband,children and grandchildren, but for horses, dogs, birds, vegetable garden,the seasons, and above all art and her craft. A passionate biophiliac,Kumin's love of nature can not be separated from her love of others, or herwill to survive.This is an inpsirational book at so many levels. Icompleted it within hours of getting my hands on it, with my husband (amedical doctor) urging me to keep going, because I was reading it out loudto him and to my thirteen year old son. Inside the Halo... iswise,upbeat, gorgeously written and utterly inspirational.Someone you knowscheduled for an operation? Had an accident? Run into some discouragingnews? Forget the card. Send this book. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A journey into deep contentment
How many writers have led lives of sustained contentment? How many personal essays express happiness and fulfillment in almost every line? Wouldn't such consistency bore readers? Not necessarily. Maxine Kumin's In Deep: Country Essays draws us into a happiness as varied as beauty. She has married herself to her plot of New Hampshire woods, her immense garden, her horses, and her farmhouse. Her essays revel in the dignity of labor that follows the seasons, in curious and succulent language, and in the hard-earned bounty of a New England farm.

In Deep has a loose, eclectic feel. It rambles between jubilant descriptions of the way horses move, journal entries, affectionate ruminations on Thoreau, and a disquisition on the parallels between poet and mule. She describes a poster in her kitchen which "advertises the virtues of the Andes stove, a porcelain monster foursquare on its black bowlegs. Makes poor cooks good and good cooks better, reads the unabashed slogan. Not an extravagant claim, its unvarnished declarations suits this country kitchen. Nothing fancy takes place here." The same cannot be said for her prose, which is often fancy. Kumin has an elegant, precise, pedantic style. She addresses us warmly in the mode of the traditional familiar essay, a kind of Oxford parlor talk. When her parlor talk treats of muck and mules, she takes a mischeivous pleasure in the dissonance. She likes to juxtapose the rustic with the cultured within a sentence, like "My favorite kitchen artist is a cookstove artist with birch and poplar chunks in the maw of his old ironsides." "Maw" takes us back to Beowulf; "Old ironsides" is jaunty Mark Twain vernacular.

Kumin finds the most amusing dissonance, however, within her own person. In her bib overalls, she comments that her son "would prefer a mother who dressed in matching beige sweaters and skirts and a single strand of pearls." She has discovered her place in life as a born-again farm matron as well as a New England establishment poet. As a result, she can take play with the rhythms and precise diction of formal prose without taking the prose or herself seriously.

Kumin refuses to preach, and she doesn't seek out mystery as much as other nature writers do. She is too busy melting the ice in her horses' drinking troughs and picking spaghetti squash. She is too busy marveling over the names and natures of funghi like "chicken-of-the-woods," the spiny-toothed "pig's trotter," and the "horn of plenty (otherwise known as the trumpet of death)." She relishes the particular, not for what it implies about the cosmos, but for itself. She writes, "Without religious faith and without the certitude such faith brings, I must take my only comfort from the natural order of things." Few of her readers find ourselves as rooted in the world as she is in her farm. We catch a glimpse, in her essays, of what physical contact with a place and its creatures over many years might feel like. ... Read more

Product Description
"Kumin writes ... with the clear gaze of a journalist and the ire of anactivist.... Filled withlove."—Christian ScienceMonitorHere Maxine Kumin's signature nature poems are shaken up and invigorated by the darker, human realities. Both "delicate and powerful" (Library Journal), she faces with equanimity the disappointments and joys of sixty years of marriage—ending with the unspoken question of "Which of us will go down first." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Powerful poetry.
Taking a peek at the back flap, the cover artist's name is Wolf Kahn, and his smudgy, sleepily rural scene is named "The Reed Place -- Melancholia." The art and the book's title hint at serenity with a touch of ambiguity and, yes, melancholy. What isn't reflected there? Diamond-hard criticism of America's post-9/11 conduct at home and abroad and some other surprises. Best not judge wholly by the winsome but mild cover.

STILL TO MOW tills vivid images of military and political realities into simple country chores as farmers might turn under rotten apples in their orchards. Think of crumbling a clod of turned earth and feeling mashed, slimy fruit between your fingers. Then read "Mulching" and find the gardener (and, by extension, yourself) "prostrate before old suicide bombings, starvation...." Suddenly nasty realities taint the innocence of the soil...and Maxine Kumin has done her poetic job perfectly.

Some of these poems confront gruesome violence of our day head on (no pun intended) and with one passing nod to nature. For example, "The Beheadings" suggests bats' blind flights as a simile for the flight of the soul as the poem renders the terrifying fates of Nicholas Berg, Daniel Pearl, Paul Johnson, and others in the graphic terms most of us intentionally shy from in our own thoughts.

The collection is actually divided into four distinct sections: I. Landscapes, II. Please Pay Attention, III. Turn It And Turn It, and IV. Looking Back. These roughly correspond to poems about the land, the Iraq war, Jewish customs, and the poet's past. Every careful phrase evokes imagery the builds in the mind. Among my favorite selections are "The Domestic Arrangement," about poet William Wordworth's wife; "Still We Take Joy," which expresses hope "the wheel will turn/ once more" from war to peace; and "Looking Back in My Eighty-first Year" -- an honoring of "fated" marriage.

Some of Kumin's poems skewer and hector. Others, such as "Death, Etc." leave a core of emptiness. And still others commemorate poetry and poets. "The Final Poem," for instance, depicts a crusty Robert Frost commanding, " 'Make every poem your final poem.' " STILL TO MOW, by the accentuated power of each entry, obeys.
... Read more

Product Description
Since the death of Robert Frost, American poetry has seen few major poets create important work in their seventh decade and beyond. Yet today Donald Hall (77), Richard Wilbur (85), Maxine Kumin (81), and, until last year, Stanley Kunitz (100) continue to move from strength to strength. Each has published a new book in the past year and collected further accolades, including the Harvard Arts Medal (awarded to Kumin) and the Ruth Lilly Prize (awarded to Wilbur).

These are poets who bear, in individual and collective ways, the imprint of Frost's legacy: a clear commitment to form; a belief that, "like a piece of ice on a hot stove, a poem must ride on its own melting"; a willingness, even an eagerness, to assume the role of poet-as-witness. Perhaps most appealingly, their poems capture a corner of New England imbued with a spirit that is both of the place and of the poet. Against the backdrop of a dark world, all four create poems that are illumined from within, holding a vision of human possibility steady in the light.

Each poet-profile in The Light Within the Light is based on intimate personal interviews and explores the landscapes, lives, and artistic achievements of the poet. Several poems are woven into each essay, allowing the reader to experience the poet's world in his or her own words. Since the paths of the four poets cross frequently, the essays "converse" with one another, layering the narrative. Detailed informational endnotes and a list of selected readings cite primary and secondary sources of interest for each poet, making the book useful to the lay reader and literary specialist alike.

The book design is by Barry Moser, one of New England's favorite artists and a wood engraver sensitive to poets and their works. He provides a full-page portrait of each of the four poets as well as spot illustrations of great beauty and charm. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

An Exquisite Volume
This is such a beautifully written little volume, so sensitive, insightful,and inspirational. Ms. Braham's choice of language to describe these poets and their poetry is exquisite!I would highly recommend it to any who enjoy a terrific read!

the light that warms
When I finished this lovely little book I sat there under my reading light for several minutes filled with the that rare satisfaction that some pieces of art lend you. These four poets are among my favorites but I learned so much about them in so little space and their poems came alive to me in an extraordinary way. I went back to my dusty shelves and resurrected them. The book rides on the shoulders of the poet who wrote it for she provides the quiet, direct intimacy that binds you to all of them. She does for each of them something that no award, and they all have many, could ever do and that is she brings them into your hearts. Moser's art adds additional beauty to it. Buy it, give it to people you care deeply about. Share with them the light. ... Read more

Product Description
"Measured but warm, this work draws you in; it is another success among her many titles."—Library Journal

In her fifteenth collection, Maxine Kumin meditates on the social consequences of such events as the bicentennial of the Civil War, and looks to poets writing from circumstances vastly different from her own. With death the central theme, poems of the body and praise songs for beloved animals explore how memory consoles and haunts. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Of nature, the world and memory


A soft thump, the collision of nature's realities and a recognition of ageing. Kumin faces the truth that soon there will be a reckoning with the Grim Reaper. So begins the revelatory poetry of a woman dissecting her life, the recollections and reminders that spring to mind in the autumn years. In Magda of Hospice House:

"I love my work as a specialist in easement.
Death is the thing I know, its catch and gurgle."

Those of a certain generation are blessed with such reminiscences, be it yesterday or sixty years ago, each as fresh as the new morning. Perhaps this is the reward of old age, as visions spring complete from the mind, the passing years insignificant. But it is these memories that so endear Kumin's poetry, her incisive observations, without the taint of revision. In The Snarl, the poet reveals a bitter memory:

"...one of the clique that had snubbed me down to the bone
so that I ate my dry sandwich daily in a stall
in the john after Latin class"

The New England poet plants her feet squarely on the ground, knows her neighbor's names, takes nothing for granted and grapples daily with the disintegration of ageing bones. She gives no quarter and exposes her own foolish pretensions, bolstered by memories of old yearnings and bittersweet recollections. In sturdy Yankee phrases, Kumin writes of animals, dogs and horses as familiar as lifelong friends, their losses just as deeply mourned. In the title poem, Jack, Kumin writes of a long lost horse:

"Oh Jack, tethered in what rough stall alone
did you remember that one good winter?"

The endless cycle of death and the nature of ritual are familiar topics on a New England farm and Kumin lives each moment of this world, on intimate terms with its comings and goings. The subtle strength of these poems reaffirm Kumin's tenacity and appreciation for the living beings that surround her, their spirits as beloved as friends and family. Certainly, the world intrudes, but not with such great import as to erode the precious rhythms of farm life: "Let them slip through my hands/ weightless as the wind and fugitive as a dream" (Crossing Over). She does not withdraw from the world, but occupies a place where comfort is found and life is undeniable. Luan Gaines/2005.




... Read more

Product Description
Essays and verses in tribute to one of America's foremost poets by Alicia Ostriker, Henry Taylor, Wendell Berry, and others. ... Read more

Product Description
A Pulitzer Prize-winning poet recounts the birth of a foal, the rehabilitation of an abused mare, the beauty of home-grown vegetables, the organic nature of writing, and other aspects of life on her New Hampshire farm. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Farm life without the lyricism
This is not the first account i've read about someone leaving busy city life to live in a bucolic farm.The thing that really sets this book apart is that Kumin skips the sappy parts and goes straight to the realities ofharsh life in the countryside.It is hard to tend horses!However, youcan tell how much she enjoys her life there.Thank you for saving us thefluff.Her short stories (the second half of the book) are all fantastic. ... Read more

Product Description
This luminous collection is Maxine Kumin's twelfth volume of poetry, the first since her remarkable memoir, Inside the Halo. Themes of loyalty, longevity, and recovery appear here, along with poems addressing the eminent dead: Wordsworth, Gorki, Rukeyser, and others. "Inescapably, many poems come up out of the earth I live on and tend to," Kumin says. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Maximizing Your Cumin
Misfortunes never neglect us even in our old age. They come again and again to haunt and injury our body and our spirit. Kumin's collection reflects on these experiences, some are misfortunes, that come to her, and to us, to bruise our lips, our hearts, our memories of friendships, our relationship to the natural world, and our souls. Hollie likes her so I thought I would give the poet a thorough try. Besides, Kumin breeds Arabian and quarter horses. And reading Kumin inspires me to concoct mediterranean cuisines, pita with hummus and Yukon potatoes sauteed with cumin. A good anthology to begin to sample the spirit of a delectable Philadelphia native:

"When Mother was little, all/ that she knew about flying was what/ her bearded grandfather told her:/ every night your soul flies/ out of your body and into/ God's lap. He keeps it under his handkerchief until morning." ... Read more

Product Description
One dog’s quest for self-definition is anything but black and white in this delightfully droll, enlightening tale by an acclaimed former poet laureate.

Caesar is a large white dog with a great many black spots. Or is he a large black dog with even more white spots? That’s the trouble: he doesn’t know which, and though nobody in the family seems to care, he won’t rest until he uncovers the truth. So off he traipses, beseeching one animal after another to find out what color he is, basically. From celebrated poet Maxine Kumin comes a doggedly quizzical hero, brought comically to life by Alison Friend’s expressive watercolors — a lovable picture-book character who ultimately learns that it’s not what’s on the outside that counts. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Understand Your Dogs
No one seems to truly understand or care what troubles Caesar, a black and white dog.Caesar appears just an ordinary good dog who follows instructions, and gives no fuzz about the food served to him every meal.Caesar has a conversation about his black on white spots, or white on black spots, with Petunia, the house cat, but it does not cheer him up.Petunia is a black cat with white paws and a white patch around her mouth area.Unlike Caesar, Petunia never seems to be bothered by the colors.Caesar goes to see Doctor Woodpecker, who happens to be black and white as well, with a red patch on the top of his head.Doctor Woodpecker gives Caesar a thorough examination.Inside Caesar's mouth he finds gray with pink spots! Or is it pink with gray spots?

In this book, Caesar takes readers through his long-winded adventure and finds many more discoveries that would finally transform him, or would they?Through Caesar's life and experiences, Maxine Kumin brilliantly conveyed the message that `what really counts is inside a person.' Alison Friend painted scenes that were perfectly matched in details.

Reviewed by Sophie Masri ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description
Relates in rhyme the famous Dutch scientist's penchant for viewing things with a microscope, through which he made remarkable observations. ... Read more