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 ...

"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...

From Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Maxine Kumin comes a timeless memoir of life, love, and poetry.Maxine Kumin left an unrivaled legacy as a pioneering poet and feminist. The Pawnbroker’s Daughter charts her journey from a childhood in a Jewish community in Depression-era Philadelphia, where Kumin’s father was a pawnbroker, to Radcliffe College, where she comes into her own as an intellectual and meets the soldier-turned-Los Alamos scientist who would become...

"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.

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 ...

"Here is a singular story of survival, an earthly miracle wrought by family devotion, gardens, horses, guts. A compelling read."—Carolyn HeilbrunIn July 1998, when Maxine Kumin's horse bolted at a carriage-driving clinic, she was not expected to live. Yet, less than a year later, her progress pronounced a miracle by her doctors, she was at work on this journal of her astonishing recovery. She tells of her time "inside the halo," the near-medieval device that kept h...

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 ...

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning poet, a stunning collection of poems that course with the rhythms of nature.A poet of piercing revelations and arresting imagery, Pulitzer Prize winner Maxine Kumin is “unforgettable, indispensable” (New York Times Book Review). In And Short the Season, her stunning last collection, she muses on mortality: her own, and that of the earth. These deeply personal, always political poems blend myth and modernity, fecundi...

“Hoagland’s verse is consistently, and crucially, bloodied by a sense of menace and by straight talk.” —The New York TimesMy heroes are the ones who don’t say much.They don’t hug people they just met.They don’t play louder when confused.They use plain language even when they listen.Wisdom doesn’t come to every Californian.Chances are I toowill die with difficulty in the dark.If you want to see a lost civil...

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...