The Roots of Things: Essays

Front Cover
Northwestern University Press, Mar 30, 2010 - Literary Collections - 194 pages

Throughout her career, Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Maxine Kumin has been at the vanguard of discussions about feminism and sexism, the state of poetry, and our place in the natural world. The Roots of Things gathers into one volume her best essays on the issues that have been closest to her throughout her storied career.

Divided into sections on "Taking Root," "Poets and Poetry," and "Country Living," these pieces reveal Kumin honing her views within a variety of forms, including speeches, critical essays, and introductions of other writers’ work. Whether she is recollecting scenes from her childhood, ruminating on the ups and downs of what she calls "pobiz" (for "poetry business"), describing the battles she’s fought on behalf of women, or illuminating the lives of animals, Kumin offers insight that can only be born of long and closely observed experience.

 

Selected pages

Contents

The Horses of Childhood
17
Radcliffe in the Forties
23
Notes
35
Brief Speech at the Poetry Society of Americas
43
Perspectives
52
Kiddielit with Anne Sexton
59
Notes on Pantoum with Swan
108
Contexts and Connections
114
Remembering Peter Davison
130
Carol Houck Smith 19232008
136
Foreword to The Complete Love Poems of May Swenson
153
GeeseGoSouth Moon
159
Foreword to Say This of Horses
173
The Wings of Winter
180
Bear
186
Copyright

Entry in Poets Bookshelf
121

Common terms and phrases

A. E. Housman American Poets Anne Sexton Arabian arrive asked audience barn Boston breeding Carolyn Kizer dinner dogs Eggs of Things Emily farm feel final foal friends Frost Medal garden Hampshire hand Harvard hear heart horses Howard Nemerov invited Jacobsen Jane Jane Kenyon Jewish Jews Josephine Josephine Jacobsen József's Karl Jay Shapiro language later Lawrence Raab literary live Longfellow look love poems Lucille Clifton lyrical mare Maxine Kumin mother never night once Pantoum pasture Peter Davison Pobiz poet’s poetry political Polly pony Press published Radcliffe Radcliffe Yard reader remember reprinted with permission rhyme rich season seeds slave soup spinach stalls Standardbred stanza story summer Swenson There’s titled took turn University vegetable waiting Whitman winter wizard women words Wouldbegoods writing young

About the author (2010)

Maxine Kumin was born in Philadelphia in 1925. She received a BA and a MA from Radcliffe College. In the 1950s, she enrolled in a poetry writing course at the Boston Center for Adult Education. The course led to the publication of poems in Harper's and The New Yorker. Her first collection of poems, Halfway, was published in 1961. Her other poetry collections include Where I Live: New and Selected Poems 1990-2010, Still to Mow, and And Short the Season. She received several awards including the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Robert Frost Medal, and the Pulitzer Prize for Up Country: Poems of New England. She also wrote four novels, short stories, a memoir entitled Inside the Halo and Beyond: The Anatomy of a Recovery, essay collections, and children's books. She died of natural causes on February 6, 2014 at the age of 88.

Bibliographic information

TitleThe Roots of Things: Essays
AuthorMaxine Kumin
PublisherNorthwestern University Press, 2010
ISBN0810126486, 9780810126480
Length194 pages
Subjects ›  › 

Literary Collections / General
Literary Criticism / General
Poetry / American / General
  
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