Like the horses she raised on her farm in New Hampshire, Maxine Kumin was a thoroughbred. She belonged to the line in American poetry that may be traced back through Robert Frost to Mistress Bradstreet. Her poems—some thirty of which were first published in The New Yorker—have the virtue of being meticulously observed and of dealing plainly with the things of the world. Though often quiet, her poems are not without their quirky aspects, as in “At a Private Showing in 1982,” a piece that appeared in the magazine:
Maxine Kumin’s is a voice—humane, humorous—that will be sadly missed.
Maxine Kumin reads her poem “Truth,” from the March 12, 2012, issue of the magazine.
Photograph: AP.
