"The power that Kumin draws from and brings to literature is potent and seemingly inexhaustible."—BooklistCollected here for the first time, these early poems inhabit Kumin's own "sneakstorm time," a space one step to the side, where quiet introspection examines the pain of loss, the idealism of youth, and the endurance of the natural world. Her characteristic earthy wisdom snaps with intensity, offering a refreshing perspective on everyday experiences. "N...

"Measured but warm, this work draws you in; it is another success among her many titles."--Library JournalIn her fifteenth collection, Maxine Kumin meditates on the social consequences of such events as the bicentennial of the Civil War, and looks to poets writing from circumstances vastly different from her own. With death the central theme, poems of the body and praise songs for beloved animals explore how memory consoles and haunts.

"Kumin writes ... with the clear gaze of a journalist and the ire of an activist.... Filled with love."—Christian Science MonitorHere Maxine Kumin's signature nature poems are shaken up and invigorated by the darker, human realities. Both "delicate and powerful" (Library Journal), she faces with equanimity the disappointments and joys of sixty years of marriage—ending with the unspoken question of "Which of us will go down first."

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.

Stories of war and conflict form the backbone of much of the Western literary canon, portraying a certain image of heroism, stoicism, and survival in the face of violence. War and Imagination challenges the canon with essays, short stories, and a wide variety of perspectives.Paying particular attention to the twentieth century and prioritizing the writings of civilians, the works highlighted in War and Imagination offer an opportunity to challenge representations ...

A lonely wizard moves to a new town in this charming children's story by renowned American poets Anne Sexton and Maxine Kumin, now in print again for the first time in decades.Everything is going wrong in the town of Drocknock until the new wizard arrives. He is very young, and he is lonely, and very nervous too; but he knows just where to find the right spells to stop the chicken pox epidemic and bring back the twenty cows that had disappeared. The drought is the ...

Lizzie, age eleven, does not let her wheelchair get in the way of her curiosity. After she is partially paralyzed in a diving accident, Lizzie and her single mom are starting life over in a small town in Florida, where Lizzie’s thirst for knowledge and adventure makes her some unlikely friends and gets her into some sticky situations. Resilient and precocious, Lizzie has a passion for learning new words (especially those with Latin roots) and a propensity for finding trouble, which is how ...

This collection includes the full text and drawings from Opposites and More Opposites, plus seven additional poems and drawings about differences. Readers of all ages will delight in this volume of witty wordplay and clever illustrations from two-time Pulitzer Prize recipient and National Book Award winner Richard Wilbur.A perfect introduction to the joy of language, this collection explores:Books About Opposites: Discover the surprising, clever, and ...

From the prize-winning poet: "A stunning volume . . . A master of the understatement, Matthews is wryly philosophical and self-deprecating." — BooklistWhen William Matthews died, the day after his fifty-fifth birthday, America lost one of its most important poets, one whose humor and wit were balanced by deep emotion, whose off-the-cuff inventiveness belied the acuity of his verse. Drawing from his eleven collections and including twenty-three previously un...

First published in 1971, The Country of Marriage is Wendell Berry's fifth volume of poetry. What he calls "an expansive metaphor" is "a farmer's relationship to his land as the basic and central relation of humanity to creation." "Similarly, marriage is the basic and central community tie; it begins and stands for the relation we have to family and to the larger circles of human association. And these relationships are in turn basic to, and may stand for, our relationship to God a...

Songs of Exotic Birds contains poems written over a span of sixty years, forming an arc of life and capturing moments the writers memory stubbornly cannot lose. Merle Fischlowitz also writes in the voices of others that his psychologists ear has caught at special moments or rites of passage, where irony imbues the experiences. From childhood memories to todays cyber-news, these poems invite you into a garden where the exotic and prosaic, domestic and feral, all show the writers deep faith ...

Second Language is the fourth volume of work from the highly acclaimed poet Lisel Mueller. The second language of the title, English, supplanted Mueller’s native language when she came to the United States from Hitler’s Germany at age fifteen. But other second languages are at work here as well. The poems in this collection have to do with memory and metaphor, two forces that enable us to interpret our experience. Each is in a sense a second language, and in Mueller’s employ each ...