Always Beginning: Essays on a Life in Poetry - Kumin, Maxine

Always Beginning: Essays on a Life in Poetry by Kumin, Maxine

Format: Trade Paperback

Published by Copper Canyon Press, 2000

In her essays, as with her Pultizer Prize-winning poetry, Maxine Kumin is equally at ease musing over her garden or discussing poetic form, raising horses or critiquing the work of other poets. For Kumin, poetry is inseparable from daily life. Whether remembering the early days of courtship with her husband (who then worked at Los Alamos during the first nuclear tests) or observing a grandchild learning to swim, poetry is a natural part of the discussion, as when, during an MRI, she recounts the healing role of memorized poems: "Lying in my MRI tomb and doggedly reciting the poem against the terrible rapping, I realized what saved me..."