Where I Live: New & Selected Poems 1990-2010

by Maxine Kumin

Here is a landmark collection celebrating the remarkable range of Maxine Kumin, one of America’s greatest living poets. Where I Live gathers poems from five previous books, together with twenty-three new poems that pay homage to Kumin’s farm life and also to poets of the past.


from “The Taste of Apple”

I could hardly see as he hoisted the great swaying body aloft

and bore it across the road to the hole and in the cold dark I poured

a libation of apple juice for the earth to welcome his corpse—

some drops spilled on his chestnut flank and some dribbled

on his cheek and splashed onto his yellow teeth as he lay

deep on one side and my hand shook—I could hardly see—

rocking my grief back and forth over this kind death

the taste of apple wasting in his mouth.

Genres: Poetry

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2010

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

[Jan Rice]

I read this poetry collection over a long period of time since I read them one at a time. The author is Maxine Kumin, who died before I'd heard of her, in 2012. She was in my parents' generation. When I was looking around online to see if I could find some of her poems (and therefore not have to type them in myself), I found a comment that said she survived a tragic generation of poets (such as Sylvia Plath) with the quality of her work intact.

I am an unpracticed poetry reader, and some of her work spoke to me more than others. I thought maybe she sometimes tried to be too topical, or felt she had to come up with a poem. She was Poet Laureate at one point, after all. Many of her poems came through loud and clear. I will put in a few examples so readers can judge for themselves (which is what I've generally been doing with poetry reviews).

Here is the first poem that attracted me to her work, although I can't remember where I came across it.

The Winking Vulva
 
 
When the old broodmare came down with Cushings, an end-
of-life disease, they took in a friend’s
 
retired gelding, thinking to have a companion
for their own midlife gelding when
 
the time came to put her down. The mare sprang
into action, newly young,
 
squatting, crooking and lifting her tail,
squirting urine and winking her vulva, all
 
classic signs of estrus. Although
bewildered, the newcomer seemed to enjoy
 
her slavish attention. What old boy
wouldn’t? But when in the sweltering
 
heat her heat persisted, they worried: something
endocrine amiss, an ovarian tumor?
 
Consulted, the vet only laughed, good for her!
At last the inviting vulva gave
 
up its vigorous winking, the two big guys
lowered their heads side by side to graze.
 
Between them, regally in charge, the mare
till yellow leaves do hang and bid no more.

The vet's comment, "good for her" is surely a blessing.

I found that one, in something called The Connotation Press -- An Online Artifact.

This one I must type myself. Then, after that, there's a longer one that will have to wait.

Flying

When Mother was little, all
that she knew about flying was what
her bearded grandfather told her:
every night your soul flies
out of your body and into
God's lap. He keeps it under
his handkerchief until morning.

Hearing this as a child haunted me.
I couldn't help sleeping.
I woke up every morning groping
as for a lost object lodged perhaps
between my legs, never knowing
what had been taken from me or what
had been returned to its harbor.

When as a new grandmoother
my mother first flew cross-country
--the name of the airline escapes me
but the year was 1947--
she consigned her soul to the Coco-
Chanel-costumed stewardess
then ordered a straight-up martini.

As they landed, the nose wheel wobbled
and dropped away. Some people screamed.
My mother was not one of them
but her shoes--she had slipped them off--
somersaulted forward. Deplaning
she took out her handkerchief
and reclaimed her soul from the ashen stewardess.

That night in a room not her own
under eaves heavy with rain
and the rue of a disbelieving daughter
my mother described her grandfather to me
a passionate man who carried his soul
wedged deep in his pants' watch-pocket:
a pious man whose red beard had never seen scissors

who planted his carrots and beets
in the dark of the moon for good reason
and who, before I was born,
rose up like Elijah.
Flew straightaway up into heaven.

I will return and see if I can get in one more lon-n-ng one.

The Last Words of Henry Manley

At first I thought I heard wrong. Was she sayen
Oil History Project, maybe somethen
about the year I put in ditchen, layen
roadbed up Stark Mountain in the CCC?
Liven alone, I'm shy of company
but then this girl comes prettied up in blue jeans
and had me talk into a tape machine
about my raisen. Seems it's history.

I was the raisen boy of Old Man Wasson.
Back then, the county farmed out all its orphans
to anyone who would have them for their keep.
My ma and pa both died in World War One.
It was the influenza took them, took down
half the town. I cried myself to sleep
one whole year, I missed my ma so terrible.
I weren't but six and scrawny. Weren't able
to do much more than clean the chicken coop

and toss hay to the goats. I weren't much good
but Old Man Wasson never used me wrong.
Because he lived alone, there were some said
he weren't right upstairs, and then they'd nod.
He fed me up on eggs and goat's milk, taught
me thirty different birds to know by song
and every plant that came. First one's coltsfoot,
Lambs' quarters is good to eat. So's cattail shoots.
Cobwebs is for cuts. Jewelweed's for the sting
of nettles. Asters bloom last. Most everythen

we ate we grew. And bartered for the rest
hayen in summer, all fall choppen wood.
Whilst I was small I stacked as best I could:
hickory, oak, maple, ash. (White birch
is only fit for tourists from the city.)
I saved my dimes for the county fair. Went dressed
up clean in Sunday clothes as if for church,
a place we never went nor never prayed.
We was a scandal to the Ladies Aid.

If there's one thing I still can't stand it's pity.
We had a handpump in the yard, a privy
a cookstove in the kitchen, a potbelly
in the front room, lamps enough to read by.
Kerosene burns yellow. I miss it still.
Not steady like a bulb, it's flickery
like somethen alive: a bird, a swallowtail.
You won't think that about 'lectricity.
And we had flowers too, old-timey ones

you hardly see these days, like hollyhocks
and red tobacco plants the hummenbirds
come to. Old Man Wasson had me listen
how those ruby throats would speak--chrk chrk--
to every bloom before they'd poke their beaks
inside. There's lots to say that don't need words.
I guess I was his father at the end.
He wouldn't have a doctor in the place.
I got in bed and held him till he went.

Winter of '44, private first class
in uniform like in the CCC
homesick and seasick I shipped across.
What made me famous was goen to the camps
where they'd outright starved most the men to death
and gassed the rest. Those piles of shoes and teeth?
They still come up. I dream them up in clumps.
Back home, the papers got aholt of me.
Local boy a hero in Germany.

Right here the tape clicks off. She says she's thrilled.
I want to say I've hardly started in
but she's packed up and standen on the doorsill
and I'm the boy whose time ran out for courten. 
No one to hear me tell my other stories.
I never married. Wished I had. No roost
for this old turkey cock to share when the sun
goes down. I swung for the brass ring once, but missed
my chance. It happens. That's history.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I guess not my favorite Kumin book of poetry but I like her edgier poems. My four favorites were:

1. The Taste of Apple - about euthanizing her horse
2. Game - about Archduke Franz Ferdinand and what an awful person he was
3. The Zen of Mowing - just what it sounds like
4. The Immutable Laws - her father's maxims


3.5 to 4.0 stars. Collections of poems can be tricky because of lack of continuity or vibe through the book.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maxine Kumin seems like a sweet older woman. Harmless, it would appear. After all, she begins her book of poetry with a focus on nature, and makes insightful observations on little things that are often overlooked. For example, in "Lore", she talks about a book she's read about blue jays, and how many acorns they ingest each season. She describes the oak trees that result from the blue jays losses, but takes notice of an even more interesting thought: who is the person, "an aspiring Ph.D." that actually counts these and compiles such data? It's that little bit of twist, from observing nature to questioning a source that make her unique, and makes you realize this is not a simple collection of pretty words. Most of all, as you continue reading Where I Live, you see that she isn't as harmless as you might suspect.

Her topics vary greatly and her observations are often are anything but sweet. In talking about Iraq, she doesn't back away from revealing the discrepancies between the suffering caused by liberators and a religious leader claiming there is a "spiritual value of suffering". She concludes that the sun comes up, "staining the sky with indifference". She also contrasts the ideals of the Geneva Convention with vice-presidents and Supreme Court justices who engage in what she calls "canned hunting". In "Please Pay Attention as the Ethics Have Changed", she wonders what kind of Humane Society (a word play on "human" society) would permit such cruelty to an animal (or moreso, to a person). From Daniel Pearl's tragic death to contaminated drinking water, she reveals her heart in her words.

She also speaks of stray dogs and abandoned cats with great feeling, and you get the impression that it isn't simply the immediate sadness that she's getting at...she's driving at the attitudes that make people shut their heart up to others. And while sometimes we may stereotype a poet as distant and focused on things beyond real life, she shows she's firmly planted in the here and now. In "The Chambermaids in the Marriot in Midmorning", she finds another life in their chatter:

"Behind my "Do not disturb" sign I go wherever they go
sorely tried by their menfolk, their husbands, lovers or sons,
who have jobs or have lost them, who drink and run around,
who total their cars and are maimed, or lie idle in traction...


I think how static my life is with its careful speeches and classes
and how I admire the women who daily clean up my messes,
who are never done scrubbing..."

The contents are divided into sections: New Poems, Looking for Luck, Connecting the Dots, The Long Marriage, Jack and Other New Poems, and Still to Mow. Simple chores, farm work, famous women authors, childbirth, the Red Sox, misbehaving pets, redemption, corporate greed, and travel all are portrayed as she sees them, not sugar-coated nor politicized. The collection as a whole feels like a book of sage advice from a favored aunt-the feisty one-the one that sometimes says what you don't want to hear but who you listen to anyway. And while they are considered poetry, the verses often read with the detail you'd find in a short story.

[James Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some of the new poems in this collection by Kumin deal with the current issues of today. Such poems as those about the beheading of captives, extraordinary rendition, and Abu Ghraib are antiwar poems, cries against the extremities of our current wars. But such poems are a far cry from the pastoral life in New Hampshire she writes about. Those are her poems I most admire. She's at her most lustrous writing about her farm. Her strength is writing about horses, nature, and the quiet New England life, weaving those themes with memory and biography. Someone said Robert Frost's New England is underlain with violence, but Kumin's is truly bucolic. She leaves her gentle landscape occasionally to dart into academia and letters. A close friend of Anne Sexton, she has something to say about suicide, for instance. She attempts the classical by imagining herself as Leda. Or she's humorous in imagining Emily Dickinson as a modern woman mastering Microsoft. But she's most at home with poems about mucking out the stables or about how beans are like a young boy. Or, my favorite, contrasting her dog's frolic in the pond with the human burden of our pasts and our need to divine our futures in the ooze of the bottom. Maxine Kumin is the only poet I know who writes so naturally about her natural space and her place in it. All the poets I read approach nature in some way, but I believe Kumin is closest to the traditional pastoral. She's as fresh as the outdoors.

[Brian · Rating 2 out of 5]

I made it through about two-thirds of this collection and am taking a break. Kumin is what I think of as a "story-teller" poet. This explains (for me) why a piece I read by Garrison Keillor (of Prairie Home Companion fame) praises Kumin, especially in comparison with Sylvia Plath (whom he considers over-rated). If you prefer deep emotional investigations over pastoral story-telling, then, like me, you'll disagree with Mr. Keillor and prefer Plath to Kumin. If not, Maxine Kumin has quite a few entertaining vignettes, and does hit a few powerful emotional chords in the meantime:
"... When I read Neruda's/ *we are approaching a great and common tenderness*/ my mind startles and connects to this/ all but obsolete small scene above the river/ where unspectacular people secure/ their bulky loads and drive away at dusk." (from her extended poem, "Hay").

[Joan Colby · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have always loved Kunim’s poems especially her horse and country themes. This collection contains both new work and excerpts from previous books. One of my favorite poems is “October, Yellowstone Park�� her elegy for Anne Sexton, which is beautifully moving and forthright. As she aged, Kumin addressed political and topical subjects, particularly cruelty to animals, in her poetry; purists might object, but I think she handled these topics effectively and wisely.

[Lynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This poet is in her 80s. Her poetry is wonderful.

[Jimmy · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the great NH poets. Poetry for everyone, unless you are squeamish about animal rights.

[Brian Wasserman · Rating 2 out of 5]

relies too much on allusions, too personal.. i was expecting more

[Rachel Doose · Rating 3 out of 5]

Favorites: "The Victorian Obsession with the Preservation of Hair," "Credo," "Letters," "Cross-Country Skiing," "October, Yellowstone Park," "Widow and Dog," "The Corset Shop"

[Francescajemm · Rating 5 out of 5]

A farm, horses, dogs, the Romantics, and long term marriage up against Guantanamo, Afghanistan, trophy hunting and rape. Astounding.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love nature and Kumin’s poems about her life on the farm. She is a fine poet. I am not into political poems and these were also included in the book.

[Katharine Holden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some powerful images.

One poem caught my mind and stays with me. Here is the first stanza from a poem called The Taste of Apple:

After the year of come-and-go nosebleeds, after
daily washing mucousy blood from his forelegs and flanks
where he swiped himself clean in his impatient horsey way,
I saw the tumor sprout waxy and white
out of one nostril and dangle there, a rare fruit.
Truth rose in my mouth, a drench of gall and wormwood
and I sent for the vet and the backhoe driver
who came together like football coaches conferring.

[Patti K · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a 2010 book of poems by the talented Kumin. They are about a sustainable
simple life including her ranch, horses, fields written in a variety of forms.
One of the poems ends this way: "Let us see life again, nevertheless,/in the words
of Isaac Babel/as a meadow over which women and horses wander." Nourishing poems.

[Sarah Yasin]

"Was that the Pyrrhic moment when
we herded the sobbing women with guns
as punching, kicking, yelling out orders
we went in breaking down doors?"

[Kathie Harper · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Kumin's poetry. The more mature I become the more I can relate to her life experiences. A perfect choice for Poetry Month, now past but would be enjoyable anytime.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Several of these poems were lovely and I enjoyed them very much. Although, the first section, "New Poems" overshadowed the rest of the book for me.

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

Gorgeous musings on life and death, “where I live and how I and everything around me dies.”

[Julie Allyn Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some poems were very good, some odd, many that I didn't quite 'get'. The final piece, Death, Etc., was excellent.

[Gaildb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poems I understood. Loved her clarity.