Nesmith Library

Selected poems, 1960-1990, Maxine Kumin

eng

index present

non fiction

Selected poems, 1960-1990

35298711

Maxine Kumin

Gathered from nine collections representing three decades of work, these poems - newly available 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 world, and the themes of loss and survival

Halfway -- Fraulein Reads Instructive Rhymes -- 400-Meter Freestyle -- Casablanca -- A Hundred Nights -- On Being Asked to Write a Poem for the Centenary of the Civil War -- The First Rain of Spring -- Morning Swim -- Sisyphus -- The Pawnbroker -- The Appointment -- Quarry, Pigeon Cove -- Prothalamion -- Purgatory -- from Joppa Diary: January 25th -- from Joppa Diary: May 10th -- from Joppa Diary: June 15th -- from Joppa Diary: September 22nd -- The Presence -- The Vealers -- Watering Trough -- Hello, Hello Henry -- Making the Jam without You -- For My Great-Grandfather: A Message Long Overdue -- We Are -- After Love -- The Nightmare Factory -- The Hermit Wakes to Bird Sounds -- The Hermit Meets the Skunk -- The Hermit Prays -- The Hermit Picks Berries -- Creatures -- Stones -- The Dreamer, the Dream -- Beans -- Mud -- Woodchucks -- History Lesson -- The Thirties Revisited -- Sperm -- The Deaths of the Uncles -- Life's Work -- The Jesus Infection -- Living Alone with Jesus -- To Swim, to Believe -- The Selling of the Slaves -- In the Root Cellar -- The Mummies -- Song for Seven Parts of the Body -- Heaven as Anus -- Young Nun at Bread Loaf -- Amanda Is Shod -- Amanda Dreams She Has Died and Gone to the Elysian Fields -- The Agnostic Speaks to Her Horse's Hoof -- Eyes -- Thinking of Death and Dogfood -- The Retrieval System -- The Longing to Be Saved -- Address to the Angels -- My Father's Neckties -- Progress Report -- The Food Chain -- The Henry Manley Blues -- Birthday Poem -- Changing the Children -- Seeing the Bones -- Sunbathing on a Rooftop in Berkeley -- The Envelope -- Body and Soul: A Meditation -- How It Is -- Splitting Wood at Six Above -- Late Snow -- The Excrement Poem -- In April, in Princeton -- July, Against Hunger -- The Survival Poem -- Territory -- How It Goes On -- Our Ground Time Here Will Be Brief -- Rejoicing with Henry -- Henry Manley Looks Back -- Feeding Time -- In the Pea Patch -- Relearning the Language of April -- Continuum: a Love Poem -- Family Reunion -- Leaving My Daughter's House -- February -- Itinerary of an Obsession -- Apostrophe to a Dead Friend -- In Memoriam P.W. Jr. 1921-1980 -- You Are in Bear Country -- Atlantic City 1939 -- The Chain -- Introducing the Fathers -- Appetite -- Grandchild -- Caring: a Dream -- Shopping in Ferney with Voltaire -- At a Private Showing in 1982 -- In the Absence of Bliss -- Video Cuisine -- How to Survive Nuclear War -- Getting Through -- Out in It -- My Elusive Guest -- Shelling Jacobs Cattle Beans -- After the Harvest -- The Long Approach -- Nurture -- With the Caribou -- In Warm Rooms, Before a Blue Light -- Thoughts on Saving the Manatee -- Repent -- Homage to Binsey Poplars -- Custodian -- Bringing Back the Trumpeter Swan -- The Accolade of the Animals -- Sleeping with Animals -- Encounter in August -- Catchment -- On Reading an Old Baedeker in Schloss Leopoldskron -- The Festung, Salzburg -- Night Launch -- Photograph, Maryland Agricultural College Livestock Show, 1924 -- Photograph, U.S. Army Flying School, College Park, Maryland, 1909 -- On Being Asked to Write a Poem in Memory of Anne Sexton -- In the Park -- Marianne, My Mother, and Me -- A Calling -- Turning the Garden in Middle Age -- Reviewing the Summer and Winter Calendar of the Next Life -- Grappling in the Central Blue -- The Bangkok Gong -- We Stood There Singing -- Distance -- A Game of Monopoly in Chavannes