The Long Approach

by Maxine Kumin

Book by Kumin, Maxine

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Hardcover

First published October 30, 1985

About the author

Maxine Kumin's 17th poetry collection, published in the spring of 2010, is Where I Live: New and Selected Poems 1990-2010. Her awards include the Pulitzer and Ruth Lilly Poetry Prizes, the Poets’ Prize, and the Harvard Arts and Robert Frost Medals. A former US poet laureate, she and her husband lived on a farm in New Hampshire. Maxine Kumin died in 2014.

Reviews

[Julie Ehlers · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Long Approach is a sophisticated collection that's divided into three sections; the first delves into Kumin's childhood, the second deals with life in cities, and the third is all about Kumin's life on her New England farm. I enjoyed all three parts, but my favorite was the middle section, "Out There," which was sometimes whimsical and filled with urban magic, but just as often addressed social injustice and strife with striking, effective imagery. This was a very cool-headed set of poems. Based on Kumin's work that I'd read in Poems from the Women's Movement, I'd expected something a little more passionate, but The Long Approach was clearly done at a different stage in both her work and her life. I still liked and admired it, and I look forward to reading more of Kumin's work.

[Abby · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I’m going home the old way with a light hand on the reins/making the long approach.”

How I love Maxine Kumin! She writes about family, history, travel, and farm life (especially horses and her beloved dalmatian), which is perhaps why I love her so faithfully. I was grieved to hear of her death two Februarys ago and thus happy to find this under-read (and now out of print?) book of her poems at a book sale. Kumin seems perpetually concerned with history, whether personal or national, and our collective tendency to forget it. Her poem on nuclear fallout in Japan, “How to Survive a Nuclear War,” is particularly searing. Recommended.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Friends of mine who attend church will sometimes quip that there have been dark moments in their lives when they would open the Bible and their eyes would land on the right verse to comfort them; the Holy Ghost offering guidance where to non-believers it would seem random chance.
I have had similar experiences with poetry. So, today, the day after Ruth Bader Ginsberg passing away, I happened to pick up this collection from Maxine Kumin and landed on the last poem in the book, the titular "The Long Approach". The ending of the poem has really resonated with me, and while it has not offered immediate salve to the wounds I bear today, I imagine one day they will if I can carry them with me long enough:

...
Last week leaving Orlando in a steep climb
my seatmate told me flying horses must be loaded
facing the tail of the plane so they may brace
themselves at takeoff. Otherwise you run
the risk they'll panic, pitch over backwards,
smash their hocks. Landing, said the groom,
there is little we can do for them except
pray for calm winds and ask the pilot
to make a long approach.

O brace me, my groom. Pray for calm winds.
Carry me back safely where the snow stands deep in March.
I'm going home the old way with a light hand on the reins
making the long approach.

[Patricia N. McLaughlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this collection, Kumin takes on the subjects of nuclear holocaust, world famine, and terrorism, along with poignant observations of life and death on her farm, where the New England Gardener tends her vegetables, fattens lambs for slaughter, and contemplates her place in the food chain.

“Is death
by bear to be preferred
to death by bomb? Under
these extenuating circumstances
your mind may make absurd
leaps. The answer’s yes.
Come on in. Cherish
your wilderness.”
—Maxine Kumin, “You Are in Bear Country”

Favorite poems:
“You Are in Bear Country”
“Diary”
“After the Harvest”
“The Long Approach”

[Mills College Library]

811.54 K9641Lo 1985