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Poet Kumin bringing evangelist's zeal to forum
Wednesday, December 08, 1999 By Bob Hoover, Post-Gazette Book Editor
The Thanksgiving visitors had left, the dishes were washed and it was time to relax, but Maxine Kumin wanted to talk poetry.
"I am a real evangelist about it," she said over the phone from her New Hampshire farm.
Kumin, 74, has been spreading the gospel for nearly 40 years through her 12 poetry collections, teaching, essays and a stint as poetry consultant to the Library of Congress in 1981. (That job is now called poet laureate of the United States.)
Her latest stop is at the International Poetry Forum tonight when she'll be awarded its $2,000 Charity Randall prize, another in an impressive collection of honors, which includes the 1973 Pulitzer Prize and the Ruth Lilly Prize.
This is Kumin's third forum visit. She was last here in 1982.
"I do what all the poets do -- teach and give readings and lectures," Kumin said. "Actually, I find I can make a living from talking about poetry more than writing it.
"Yet, there's an enormous amount of poetry out there these days. Every day when I go to my mailbox, there's another new book of poems in it. Sometimes I wonder, 'Who's reading all these poems?' "
When Kumin's first collection, "Halfway," was published in 1961, the American poetry community was a small one dominated by men. Largely on the strength of her work and the poetry of her friend Anne Sexton and other women poets, the community has widened considerably.
"Much of the poetry these days is coming from young women documenting their era," Kumin said, "and the quality of it is quite high."
She describes her own work as "the exploration of the world around me. I write out of my own experience. For me, my life is a metaphor for my work."
Kumin also explains her approach in a recent poem, "A Calling":
Poetry is like farming. It's
Kumin's life, however, nearly ended in 1998 when she was severely injured in a horse-riding accident. "It was a totally freak accident and not the horse's fault," she said, "but I ended up with a hangman's fracture of my neck. I'm not completely recovered, and I want the people to know that when they see me, why I'm still a little bent over."
Her account of her recovery, "Inside the Halo and Beyond," will be published early next year by W.W. Norton. "It's subtitled 'Anatomy of a Recovery,' but that was the publisher's idea. I'm not fully recovered yet," Kumin said.
While her poetry brings her to town, Kumin is also enjoying success as a mystery writer. Her first effort at crime fiction, "Quit Monks or Die," from the small Oregon publisher, Story Line Press, is now in a second printing after getting glowing advance reviews. It's her fifth novel.
Maxine Kumin reads at 8 tonight in Carnegie Lecture Hall, Oakland. For tickets: 412-621-9893.
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