Maxine Kumin

America, meet Lizzie Peterlinz, age 11. Paralyzed below the waist after slipping off a diving board two years ago, Lizzie does not let her wheelchair get in the way of her curiosity. She and her single mother are starting life over in a small town in Florida, where Lizzie's hunger for knowledge and adventure lead her to some unlikely friends. She bonds with Josh, the only other disabled kid at her school, and they rejoice in normal kid activities, despite the awkward stares they face at school. And she and her mother make friends with some elderly neighbors, Teresa and Digger Martinez, who become Lizzie's adopted grandparents, teaching her Spanish and encouraging her to embrace her life, difficulties and all. One of Lizzie's favorite things to do is visit a run-down roadside petting zoo, run by a slow-moving gentle giant Lizzie and her mom affectionately call Henry the Huge. One afternoon, as Lizzie is exploring the fields behind the petting zoo, she comes across a shack full of screeching monkeys and the mysterious boy who cares for them. A man with a slick grin arrives on the scene, and Lizzie begins to uncover where the monkeys came from. With Josh and Digger's help, she puts the pieces together, but it's too late, the monkey thief strikes again and this time, it's Lizzie who's in danger.

A poet of piercing revelations and arresting imagery, Kumin is "unforgettable, indispensable" (New York Times Book Review). In And Short the Season she muses on mortality: her own and that of the earth. Always deeply personal, always political, these poems blend myth and modernity, fecundity and death, and the violence and tenderness of humankind. From "Whereof the Gift Is Small" And short the season, first rubythroat in the fading lilacs, alyssum in bloom, a honeybee bumbling in the bleeding heart on my gelding s grave while beetles swarm him underground. Wet feet, wet cuffs, little flecks of buttercup on my sneaker toes, bluets, violets crowding out the tufts of rich new grass the horses nose and nibble like sleepwalkers held fast brittle beauty might this be the last?"

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 to poets of the past.

Here 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."

Collected here for the first time, these early poems inhabit Kumin's own "sneakstorm time," a space one step to the side, where quiet introspection examines the pain of loss, the idealism of youth, and the endurance of the natural world. Her characteristic earthy wisdom snaps with intensity, offering a refreshing perspective on everyday experiences. "New England farm life, modern American history, Jewish identity and a quietly vibrant feminist consciousness provide themes for this gathering from a long and distinguished career."—Publishers Weekly.

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. " S]he resonates wisdom while announcing a triumph of body and soul."--Anne Roiphe, New York Times Book Review "Maxine Kumin brings the sensitivity and imagination of a poet to her extraordinary ordeal."--Richard Selzer, author of Mortal Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery "From a singular experience she has created a lesson that is universal, which, it seems to me, is the essence of being a poet."--Abraham Verghese, author of The Tennis Partner

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.

In these new poems, her eleventh collection, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet focuses on the themes of family, friendship, the pleasures and rigors of rural life and the animal world that have always engaged her powerfully and fruitfully. Change and the things that never change attract Kumin's attention equally. Whether chronicling the bounty of summer, the cycle of seasons, or memories of youthful parties, her voice is clear, wise, and compelling.

Containing more than a hundred poems by seventy-four poets of twenty-two nationalities, ""Say This of Horses"" represents the abundance of poems about horses that have been written throughout the ages and around the world. Whether probing the ages-old connection between horses and humans, the immediate physical presence of horses, or the metaphysical elements of these magnificent animals, this collection celebrates the horse as what Maxine Kumin calls ""our enduring myth, the repository for our love and terror."" Divided into six sections, ""Say This of Horses"" considers horses in a multitude of times and places. ""Antiquity"" explores the forging of the earliest mythical ties between horses and humans. ""Here, Now"" places horses in the present, where their physical presence is most acutely felt. ""Essence"" explores the metaphysical qualities of horses. ""Harnessed"" contains a selection of poems about horses in war, atwork, and in sport and recreation. ""Mirrors"" shows them as imaginative symbols. Finally, ""Lenses"" moves into the realm of abstraction and fantasy. The selections within this far-reaching collection are joyous, moving, erudite, and at times profoundly sad. Poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, W. S. Merwin, Tess Gallagher, Yusef Komunyakaa, Pablo Neruda, Anne Sexton, Wallace Stevens, May Sarton, Jane Kenyon, and James Dickey, among many others, are sure to delight and surprise readers familiar with or just exploring the rich literature on horses.

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.

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.

Kumin reflects on the process of writing poetry and on life in the country