The Long Marriage: Poems

by Maxine Kumin

This luminous collection is Maxine Kumin's twelfth volume of poetry, the first since her remarkable memoir, Inside the Halo . Themes of loyalty, longevity, and recovery appear here, along with poems addressing the eminent dead: Wordsworth, Gorki, Rukeyser, and others. "Inescapably, many poems come up out of the earth I live on and tend to," Kumin says.

Genres: Poetry

120 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1996

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

[Lanette Sweeney · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am just discovering this former Pulitzer winner and onetime poet laureate of New Hampshire. Her poems are brilliant but accessible with just a little bit of effort on the reader's part. Many of these poems are tributes to other poets; I especially loved her Pantoum, with Swan, which imagines the rape of Leda but with the outcome changed easily by a morning after pill: Helen,// Troy, wooden horse, forestalled in one swallow//flushed harmlessly away down rhe toilet.... And I was also deeply moved by her poems about being in a nursing home, her fellow patients undergoing rehab. And I love Want, about how rhe "unbeguiled"can ignore the world's suffering multitudes but "There will always be somewhere a quorum of holy fools// who wade into the roiling sea despite the tsunami// to dip teaspoon after teaspoon from the ocean."

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

“Inescapably, many poems come up out of the earth I live on and tend to,” says Kumin. Themes of loyalty, longevity, and recovery appear here too, along with her musings about other poets who have fertilized her imagination: Wordsworth, Gorki, Moore, Hopkins, Rukeyser, Rilke, Kizer, Sexton, and “the bad girls of the New England Poetry Club.”

Favorite Poems:
“Why There Will Always Be a Thistle”
“Highway Hypothesis” (wow!)
“8 A.M. in Grays Point”
“My Life”
“Ghazal: On the Table”
“Bringing Down the Birds”
“The Joy of Cooking, 1931”
“The Ancient Lady Poets”
“Oblivion”

[Bonnie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Accessible poems, so much so that I read this cover-to-cover in a few hours today. "Rilke Revisited" sent me to learn more about his angels, "Why There Will Always Be Thistle" made me smile, a section of poems about pink-and-green Florida left me cringing (though I live on the left coast), and her personal poetry about the experience of recovering from a near-fatal accident seemed suited to my retirement community with its nursing wing, rehab studio, people with canes, and walkers, and wheelchairs. "Bringing Down the Birds" made me shudder but I laughed out loud at one of the "long marriage" poems, "Domesticity." Much to enjoy here for people who like plain-spoken poems, most only one or two pages long.

[Deirdre · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this one! More accessible than some poetry I have read, funny in places. I suffered most in this book because I don't know most of the poets she gave tribute to: Only Wordsworth and Sexton. But over all, even when some of it went over my head, still enjoyable.

I most appreciated the poems on farming/composting/living on the earth, and the poems about recovering from injury. Also the glimpse into old age, a long life. Less about marriage in it than I expected from the title, but that is okay, too.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good collection. Some very sad personal poems.

[Hillary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good poems about depressing subjects. One of my favorite lines: “When we are gone,/let sunlight shine/through jars and jars.”

[David Anthony Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maxine Kumin has long been a favorite of mine for her steady eye on what it means to be human in a natural world. She is honest and yet hopeful about human relationships in the face of cruelty and death. In these poems she studies the headlines and brings disasters into her kitchen and garden even as she heals from her own injuries. Her death nearly a year ago is still a great loss.

[Candace Haskell · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love Maxine Kumin. This book was disappointing because I wanted more poems on long term marriage and what that's like. There wasn't enough for me.
The surprise pleasure were the poems about her wretched fall from a horse and breaking her neck and other things and her recovery process. Having just broken an ankle and a leg falling down stairs in a freak accident I related.

[Maryanne Dipasquale · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some poetry is sort of like thin bone china. It's pretty to look at it, but you might break it if you get both your hands on it and hold it tight. This poetry isn't like that. It's much better than that. It's like wet clay you can stick your hands right in.

[Marissa · Rating 1 out of 5]

Maybe it was just my mood, but this one left me flat. Most of the poems are written about other poets, most of whom, while classics of the canon, are not my cup of tea. So, if you like the oldies, you may like this volume. It was not for me!

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the simple, accessible language in these poems, and some of the imagery was really lovely as well.