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The Nightmare Factory
poems by maxine kumin
- GenresPoetry
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1970
16 people want to read
About the author
Maxine Kumin
135 books77 followersMaxine 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.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 2, 2024
After Love
Afterwards, the compromise.
Bodies resume their boundaries.
These legs, for instance, mine.
Your arms take you back in.
Spoons of our fingers, lips
Admit their ownership.
The bedding yawns, a door
Blows aimlessly ajar
And overhead, a plane
Singsongs coming down.
Nothing is changed, except
There was a moment when
The wolf, the mongering wolf
Who stands outside the self
Lay lightly down, and slept.
Afterwards, the compromise.
Bodies resume their boundaries.
These legs, for instance, mine.
Your arms take you back in.
Spoons of our fingers, lips
Admit their ownership.
The bedding yawns, a door
Blows aimlessly ajar
And overhead, a plane
Singsongs coming down.
Nothing is changed, except
There was a moment when
The wolf, the mongering wolf
Who stands outside the self
Lay lightly down, and slept.
October 25, 2013
Published in 1970, this book is just a wonderful example of good writing.
Here is one poem. I love the line about the eyes migrating:
Together
By Maxine W. Kumin
The water closing
over us and the
going down is all.
Gills are given.
We convert in a
town of broken hulls
and green doubloons.
O you dead pirates
hear us! There is
no salvage. All
you know is the color
of warm caramel. All
is salt. See how
our eyes have migrated
to the uphill side?
Now we are new round
mouths and no spines
letting the water cover.
It happens over
and over, me in
your body and you
in mine.
Source: The Nightmare Factory (Harper & Row, 1970)
Here is one poem. I love the line about the eyes migrating:
Together
By Maxine W. Kumin
The water closing
over us and the
going down is all.
Gills are given.
We convert in a
town of broken hulls
and green doubloons.
O you dead pirates
hear us! There is
no salvage. All
you know is the color
of warm caramel. All
is salt. See how
our eyes have migrated
to the uphill side?
Now we are new round
mouths and no spines
letting the water cover.
It happens over
and over, me in
your body and you
in mine.
Source: The Nightmare Factory (Harper & Row, 1970)
September 8, 2007
My favorite poem in "The Nightmare Factory" by Maxine Kumin is "For My Son on the Highways of His Mind." The poem is a mother (Kumin) talking about her son hitchhiking, and the refrain goes:
"Dreaming you travel light
guitar pick and guitar
bedroll sausage-tight
they take you as you are.
They take you as you are
there's nothing left behind
guitar pick and guitar
on the highways of your mind."
I love this poem in part because I also have a son, and it conveys hopes and fears without becoming maudlin. It's lovely, and haunting.
"Dreaming you travel light
guitar pick and guitar
bedroll sausage-tight
they take you as you are.
They take you as you are
there's nothing left behind
guitar pick and guitar
on the highways of your mind."
I love this poem in part because I also have a son, and it conveys hopes and fears without becoming maudlin. It's lovely, and haunting.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews