House, Bridge, Fountain, Gate

by Maxine Kumin

Softcover. Signed by author. aged soiled covers. some corner and edgewear, otherwise nice clean readable copy.

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

First published May 16, 1975

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

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

A muscular writer, making literal hay from the farm world around her in this volume, as well as from the landscape of memories and inner worlds she brings so evocatively to life with her poems. I could reread this, and read more of her work, for certain.

[Wayne · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice find, I look forward to reading more of Kumin’s work. Beautiful metaphors abound, grounded in nature, the body, experience. My kind of poetry...

[Marguerite Hargreaves · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book, actually titled, House, Bridge, Fountain, Gate, is divided into five thematic sections. I really liked the first two and enjoyed the third, but with fewer Post-It flags. The last two, not so much. Maxine Kumin writes about the ordinary in extraordinary ways:

"That a man may be free of his ghosts
he must return to them like a garden.
He must put his hands in the sweet rot
uprooting the turnips, washing them
tying them into bundles
and shouldering the whole load to market."

"Their chromosomes tight as a chain gang
their genes like innocent porters"

"while his wife lay alone at home like a tarnished spoon"

"In phrases lazy as marriage
running on, breaking off, beginning again"

I'm not sure this volume is a keeper, but I ordered Kumin's anthology. The woman can put together words nicely.

[C · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyed this collection, though it did feel a little uneven.

I really liked the last, short section of poems for her horse. I know, it doesn't sound like something I would like. I suppose that's why it was so well done...

[Abby · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd forgotten that I'd already read most of these poems in her collected works, but no matter, because I love Maxine Kumin, and I'm always in the mood for her. Nature, horses, Jesus, vulgarity, swimming: What more do you really need in a book of poems?

[Mills College Library]

811.54 K9641b 1975