Looking for Luck: Poems

by Maxine Kumin

"From a marketplace in Bangkok to the fields of New Hampshire, from recollections of her own childhood to celebrations of an infant grandson, Kumin stakes her far-flung claims with authority in her tenth book of poetry."-- Publishers Weekly

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

First published February 28, 1992

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

[Carol · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kumin is at her best writing about farm life especially horses; she seems to have an affinity for those noble beasts. Almost every book she writes has an elegy for Anne Sexton, the one on here is not the her best. Her work improves with rereading.

[Justine · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 Stars
Favorite Poem: The Poet's Garden

[Dan Gobble · Rating 5 out of 5]

People (her daughter, a poet friend, and a lover, among others), places (far away lands, beaches, her farm and forests, among others), creatures large and small (an elephant, a bear, horses, and dogs, among others), plants, trees, work, leisure, times of stress and times of delight . . . all fall under the watchful, wise gaze of Maxine Kumin. She brings her observations and insights to us with clarity and wonder and offers them to us for our own puzzling-out and pondering. Her opening prologue quote from Howard Nemerov gives us a compass for the territory she'll be covering and offers us a bearing to get us started as we enter these poems:

PROLOGUE

O swallows, swallows, poems are not
The point. Finding again the world,
That is the point. Where loveliness
Adorns intelligible things
Because the mind's eye lit the sun.

(Howard Nemerov, as quoted in Looking for Luck: Poems, Maxine Kumin, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, originally published: 1992, paperback edition: 1993, p. 13)

Windows into the world? Trails hacked out through the busyness of life? Gaps or breaks in the fog where we catch greater clarity? "Finding again the world . . ." "That is the point!"

I offer up CREDO as a favorite from this collection and one I'll carry with me for many days to come:

CREDO

I believe in magic. I believe in the rights
of animals to leap out of our skins
as recorded in the Kiowa legend:
Directly there was a bear where the boy had been

as I believe in the resurrected wake-robin,
first wet knob of trillium to knock
in April at the underside of earth's door
in central New Hampshire where bears are

though still denned up at that early greening.
I believe in living on grateful terms
with the earth, with the black crumbles
of ancient manure that sift through my fingers

when I topdress the garden for winter. I believe
in the wet springs of earthworms aroused out of season
and in the bear, asleep now in the rock cave
where my outermost pasture abuts the forest.

I cede him a swale of chokeberries in August.
I give the sow and her cub as much yardage
as they desire when our paths intersect
as does my horse shifting under me

respectful but not cowed by our encounter.
I believe in the gift of the horse, which is magic,
their deep fear-snorts in play when the wind comes up,
the ballet of nip and jostle, plunge and crow hop.

I trust them to run from me, necks arched in a full
swan's S, tails cocked up over their backs
like plumes on a Cavalier's hat. I trust them
to gallop back, skid to a stop, their nostrils

level with my mouth, asking for my human breath
that they may test its intent, taste the smell of it.
I believe in myself as their sanctuary
and the earth with its summer plumes of carrots,

its clamber of peas, beans, masses of tendrils
as mine. I believe in the acrobatics of boy
into bear, the grace of animals
in my keeping, the thrust to go on.

(Maxine Kumin, Looking for Luck: Poems, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, originally published: 1992, paperback edition: 1993, p. 15-6)

In this poem I've found my New Year's resolution for 2017: "living on grateful terms
with the earth."

[Darrell · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is more of an intelligent collection of poems. The first few poems lull you into thinking, "ah nature poems," then each poem of the collection builds off each other and branch out into different ideas, but all interconnected.

The majority of these poems are narrative based and some of the strongest poems for me are, "Subduing the Dream In Alaska," and, "Hay."

The collection lost momentum at the end for me. I think it's because the focus in the last section seemed more autobiographical (more detail about the speaker's emotions rather than experiences), and not that being autobiographical is a bad thing, but I missed the references to Rilke, and Keats, or rather bigger concepts and people that the speaker tries to identify with but cannot.

In the last section, I do think "The Nuns of Childhood: Two Views" is interesting structure wise.

Like I wrote, an intelligent collection. I would recommend to people who like T.S Eliot or Seamus Heaney.

[Betty · Rating 4 out of 5]

Childhood, one of Kumin's themes, surfaces in "Hay", "Falling Asleep to the Sound of Waves" (from the p.o.v. of a fetus), and "Noah, at Six Months". Travel, another theme, highlights her visit to Andalusia, Georgia, in "On Visiting Flannery O'Connor's Grave". There also are poems on the theme of memory in "The Porch Swing" and "The Confidantes" The last lines of "Indian Summer" sum up those memories in "...I think of the house of our childhood, a big / baluster rubbed dark and smooth in the middle, / stubbed up against but holding." Of all these themes, one cannot help include that of horses, of bears in a Tlingit legend, and of various other animals.

[Donna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this book, though it sometimes fell into rather so-so, repetitive poems about animals. The prologue and epilogue wonderfully bookend the work...and really show a stronger poet than perhaps the book as a whole showed. Kumin is an amazing poet in her use of formal verse, and someone whom I admire very much. There are some extraordinary pieces within in this collection, but as a whole I found it uneven and at times less than I what I would have expected from her.

[Keeley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had previously read more about Maxine Kumin than I had actually read of her verse. In this collection at least, she is very tuned in to the life of the New England countryside -- horses especially -- while also being influenced by Native American and other mythologies. I particularly enjoyed her ludic experimentation with form. "On Wings" was amusing and memorable.

[Kate Birgel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Re-reading this book of poems. I highly rec. it to those that enjoy prose poetry with a naturalist perspective.

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

Favorite Poems:
“Credo”
“Praise Be”
“Hay”
“Taking the Lambs to Market”
“On Visiting Flannery O’Connor’s Grave”
“Remarkable Women: An Apostrophe”

[Kristina Gibson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really lovely. We should all read a bit more poetry.