Maxine Kumin - Synthesis Response

Maxine Kumin's poetry stood out to me as very personal. Each poem I selected was taken from a certain experience in her life - "Jack", for example, was about a horse that she owned. She often delves into her past. One article I read about her on poetryfoundation.org talked about the impact living in New England has had on her poetry. When I read the imagery in her poetry, I did picture New England in my mind, so I found that very interesting.
What I liked most about her style of poetry was that it read like a story - her use of enjambment in almost every poem allowed the lines to flow together. Her poems were never choppy, they were long and detailed and all had a story to them.
Aside from her farm and life in New England, many of Kumin's poems are also about her family - "Where I Live" references her mother, and "Appetite" mentions her father. She also talks about her marriage and love in "The Long Marriage", "After Love", and "Looking Back in my Eighty-First Year". Her poems really were written from her experiences, and all have very deep emotion, which makes me think that she was more influenced by herself and her own experiences than any teachers, poets, or peers.

Anne Sexton

Maxine Kumin was heavily influenced by Anne Sexton, who she met and became good friends with during a poetry workshop in 1957. The two of them worked together and shared some of their poetry, and had a great influence on each other until Sexton's suicide in 1974. Because of her struggle with depression, Sexton's poems are more dreary and morbid than those of Kumin, but they have a similar flow, and both use quatrains often. They also both use lots of enjambment and long, run on sentences throughout their poetry.

Her Kind by Anne Sexton

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.

The Truth The Dead Know by Anne Sexton

Gone, I say and walk from church,
refusing the stiff procession to the grave,
letting the dead ride alone in the hearse.
It is June.  I am tired of being brave.

We drive to the Cape.  I cultivate
myself where the sun gutters from the sky,
where the sea swings in like an iron gate
and we touch.  In another country people die.

My darling, the wind falls in like stones
from the whitehearted water and when we touch
we enter touch entirely.  No one's alone.
Men kill for this, or for as much.

And what of the dead?  They lie without shoes
in the stone boats.  They are more like stone
than the sea would be if it stopped.  They refuse
to be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone.

Maxine Kumin Interview

The Long Marriage by Maxine Kumin

The sweet jazz
of their college days
spools over them
where they lie
on the dark lake
of night growing
old unevenly:
the sexual thrill
of Peewee Russell's
clarinet; Jack
Teagarden's trombone
half syrup, half
sobbing slide;
Erroll Garner's
rusty hum-along
over the ivories;
and Glen Miller's
plane going down
again before sleep
repossesses them…

Torschlusspanik.
Of course
the Germans have
a word for it,
the shutting of
the door,
the bowels' terror
that one will go
before
the other as
the clattering horse
hooves near.

This is another reminiscent poem of Kumin's marriage, but this one has a lighter tone to it. The theme of jazz music sets the tone, especially when Kumin describes the music of four famous jazz musicians, Russel, Teagarden, Miller, and Garner. The word Torschlusspanik is literally translated into "door-shutting panic", which is the fear that time is running out for a woman to get married or have children, etc. This fear of running out of time to fall in love may be part of the reason why Kumin chose to marry her husband so hastily.

Wagons by Maxine Kumin

Their wheelchairs are Conestoga wagons drawn
into the arc of a circle at 2 P.M.

Elsie, Gladys, Hazel, Fanny, Dora
whose names were coinage after the First World War

remember their parents tuned to the Fireside Chats,
remember in school being taught to hate the Japs.

They sit attentive as seals awaiting their fish
as the therapist sings out her cheerful directives:

Square the shoulders, lean back, straighten the knee
and lift! Tighten, lift and hold, Ladies!

They will retrain the side all but lost in a stroke,
the spinal cord mashed but not severed in traffic.

They will learn to adjust to their newly replaced
hips, they will walk on feet of shapely plastic.

This darling child in charge of their destiny
will lead them forward across the prairie.

What really stood out to me in this poem was the last stanza: "this darling child in charge of their destiny will lead them forward across teh prairie". I understood this poem as elderly growing up and needing younger people to take care of them. Throughout the majority of one's life, it is natural to think that the older people will take care of those younger than them, but once they've reached a certain age where they can't stand up on their own or need "newly replaced hips" the roles switch and those who are more "fit" must take care of them.

After Love by Maxine Kumin

Afterwards, the compromise.
Bodies resume their boundaries.

These legs, for instance, mine.
Your arms take you back in.

Spoons of our fingers, lips
admit their ownership.

The bedding yawns, a door
blows aimlessly ajar

and overhead, a plane
singsongs, coming down.

Nothing is changed, except
there was a moment when

the wolf, the mongering wolf
who stands outside the self

lay lightly down, and slept.

Kumin uses a lot of personification in this poem: "The bedding yawns", "lips admit their ownership", "a plane singsongs" to show the feeling of life and happiness experienced after love. Everything is coming alive in the room, and the lovers' bodies seem to be doing things on their own without control, making them seem human themselves.

Appetite by Maxine Kumin

I eat these
wild red raspberries
still warm from the sun
and smelling faintly of jewel weed
in memory of my father

tucking the napkin
under his chin and bending
over an ironstone bowl
of the bright drupelets
awash in cream

my father
with the sigh of a man
who has seen all and been redeemed
said time after time
as he lifted his spoon

men kill for this.

This poem is essentially a run-on sentence in which Kumin is remembering her father and the way he used to eat. Her appetite reminds her of her father, just as her home reminds her of her mother (in Where I Live). The final line "men kill for this" is an example of an envoi, and concludes the poem with a strange change in tone, from reminiscent of her father's life to a lighter more humorous tone.

Where I Live by Maxine Kumin

Is vertical:

Garden, pond, uphill

Pasture, run-in shed.

Through pines, Pumpkin Ridge. 

Two switchbacks down

Church spire, spit of town.

Where I climb I inspect

The peas, cadets erect

In lime-capped rows,

Hear hammer blows

As pileateds peck

The rot of shagbark hickories

Enlarging last 

Year's pterodactyl nests.

Granite erratics 

Humped like bears

Dot the outermost pasture

Where in tall grass 

Clots of ovoid scat 

Butternut-size, milky brown

Announce our halfgrown

Moose padded past

Into the forest

To nibble beech tree sprouts.

Wake-robin trillium

In dapple-shade. Violets,

Landlocked seas I swim in.

I used to pick bouquets

For her, framed them                            

With leaves. Schmutzige

She said, holding me close

To scrub my streaky face. 

Almost from here I touch 

My mother's death.

The poem first starts by describing the imagery of Maxine's home, but she soon begins to tie the images in with her memories. She remembers her mother saying "smutzige" which means "dirty hands" in German. She remembers her mother taking care of her, and she thinks of her mother when she thinks of her old home. The rich imagery allows the reader to see exactly what she sees, and when she pictures it so vividly she feels her mother so close that she can "touch her mother's death".

Woodchucks by Maxine Kumin

Gassing the woodchucks didn't turn out right.
The knockout bomb from the Feed and Grain Exchange
was featured as merciful, quick at the bone
and the case we had against them was airtight,
both exits shoehorned shut with puddingstone,
but they had a sub-sub-basement out of range.

Next morning they turned up again, no worse
for the cyanide than we for our cigarettes
and state-store Scotch, all of us up to scratch.
They brought down the marigolds as a matter of course
and then took over the vegetable patch
nipping the broccoli shoots, beheading the carrots.

The food from our mouths, I said, righteously thrilling
to the feel of the .22, the bullets' neat noses.
I, a lapsed pacifist fallen from grace
puffed with Darwinian pieties for killing,
now drew a bead on the little woodchuck's face.
He died down in the everbearing roses.

Ten minutes later I dropped the mother. She
flipflopped in the air and fell, her needle teeth
still hooked in a leaf of early Swiss chard.
Another baby next. O one-two-three
the murderer inside me rose up hard,
the hawk eye killer came on stage forthwith.

There's one chuck left. Old wily fellow, he keeps
me cocked and ready day after day after day.
All night I hunt his humped-up form. I dream
I sight along the barrel in my sleep.
If only they'd all consented to die unseen
gassed underground the quiet Nazi way.

The allusion to the Holocaust - "gassed underground the quiet Nazi way" - at the end of the poem explains Kumin's feelings towards the woodchucks: she basically wants to exterminate all of them, and tries many different methods to get rid of them all. Kumin uses a lot of imagery to describe the killing of the woodchucks - "she flipflopped in the air and fell, her needle teeth still hooked in a leaf of early Swiss chard". Despite her efforts, one of these woodchucks remains, and she knows that her job is incomplete unless she manages to kill them all. This poem shows a darker side to Kumin - although she lives on a farm and loves her horses, she is not afraid to get "down and dirty" at times and she knows she must get rid of the woodchucks to help her farm.

Looking Back In My Eighty-First Year by Maxine Kumin

Instead of marrying the day after graduation,

in spite of freezing on my father's arm as  

here comes the bride struck up,

saying, I'm not sure I want to do this,

I should have taken that fellowship

to the University of Grenoble to examine

the original manuscript

of Stendhal's unfinished Lucien Leuwen,

I, who had never been west of the Mississippi,

should have crossed the ocean

in third class on the Cunard White Star,     

the war just over, the Second World War

when Kilroy was here, that innocent graffito,

two eyes and a nose draped over

a fence line.  How could I go?

Passion had locked us together.

Sixty years my lover,

he says he would have waited.

He says he would have sat

where the steamship docked

till the last of the pursers

decamped, and I rushed back     

littering the runway with carbon paper . . . 

Why didn’t I go? It was fated.

Marriage dizzied us. Hand over hand,

flesh against flesh for the final haul,         

we tugged our lifeline thru limestone and sand,

lover and long-leggèd girl.

In this poem, Kumin reflects on her decision to marry so early in her life - "the day after graduation". Thinking about all the things she never got to do that she could've done, she wonders if she made the right choice. She refers to her husband as her "lover" and said they were dizzied by each other, as if she had no control over the choices she made because her love was so strong. Again, Kumin uses a lot of enjambment to keep the poem flowing. Although she does not regret her love, she realizes she has missed out on a lot of things she could have done, and her thoughts continue to go back and forth when thinking of what she should've done.

Jack by Maxine Kumin

How pleasant the yellow butter

melting on white kernels, the meniscus

of red wine that coats the insides of our goblets

where we sit with sturdy friends as old as we are

after shucking the garden's last Silver Queen

and setting husks and stalks aside for the horses

the last two of our lives, still noble to look upon:

our first foal, now a bossy mare of 28

which calibrates to 84 in people years

and my chestnut gelding, not exactly a youngster

at 22. Every year, the end of summer

lazy and golden, invites grief and regret:

suddenly it's 1980, winter buffets us,

winds strike like cruelty out of Dickens. Somehow

we have seven horses for six stalls. One of them,

a big-nosed roan gelding, calm as a president's portrait

lives in the rectangle that leads to the stalls. We call it

the motel lobby. Wise old campaigner, he dunks his

hay in the water bucket to soften it, then visits the others

who hang their heads over their dutch doors. Sometimes

he sprawls out flat to nap in his commodious quarters.

That spring, in the bustle of grooming

and riding and shoeing, I remember I let him go

to a neighbor I thought was a friend, and the following

fall she sold him down the river. I meant to

but never did go looking for him, to buy him back

and now my old guilt is flooding this twilit table

my guilt is ghosting the candles that pale us to skeletons

the ones we must all become in an as yet unspecified order.

Oh Jack, tethered in what rough stall alone

did you remember that one good winter?


 

Throughout the poem, Kumin uses enjambment to make the lines flow together more like a story. The poem changes tone from "pleasant" summer to "cruel" winter, in which Kumin alludes to Charles Dickens' sometimes harsh writing. At the end of the poem, Kumin speaks of her guilt for letting Jack go. She describes her guilt using figurative language, saying it's "flooding this twilit table" and comparing it to a ghost, giving the image that the guilt is haunting her and consuming her.

Maxine Kumin Biography/Time Line

-          1925: born in Philadelphia Maxine Winokur

-          1946: received Bachelor’s Degree from Radcliffe College and married Victor Kumin

-          1948: received Master’s from Radcliffe College

-          1957: studied poetry at the Boston Center for Adult Education with John Holmes

-          1958-1951: taught English at Tufts University

-          1961-1963: was a scholar at the Radcliffe Institute for Independent Study

-          Released the following poetry collections:

o   1961: Halfway, Holt

o   1965: The Privilege

o   1970: The Nightmare Factory

o   1972: Up Country (Won Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1973)

o   1975: House, Bridge, Fountain, Gate

o   1978: The Retrieval System

o   1982: Our Ground Time Here Will Be Brief: New and Selected Poems

o   1985: The Long Approach

o   1989: Nurture

o   1992: Looking for Luck (Won the Poet’s Prize in 1994)

o   1996: Connecting the Dots

o   1997: Selected Poems 1960-1990

o   2001: The Long Marriage

o   2003: Bringing Together: Uncollected Early Poems 1958-1988

o   2005: Jack and Other New Poems

o   2007: Still To Mow

o   2010: Where I Live: New and Selected Poems 1990-2010

-          1972: won the Eunice Tietjens Memorial Prize for Poetry

-          1980: won American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award for excellence in literature

-          1981-1982: Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress

-          1986: won an Academy of American Poets fellowship

-          1999: won the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize

-          Is also known for novels, short stories, essays, and children’s books

-          Currently lives on a farm in New Hampshire with her husband

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxine_Kumin