Always Beginning: Essays on a Life in Poetry

In her essays, as with her Pultizer Prize-winning poetry, Maxine Kumin is equally at ease musing over her garden or discussing poetic form, raising horses or critiquing the work of other poets. For Kumin, poetry is inseparable from daily life. Whether remembering the early days of courtship with her husband (who then worked at Los Alamos during the first nuclear tests) or observing a grandchild learning to swim, poetry is a natural part of the discussion, as when, during an MRI, she recounts the healing role of memorized poems: "Lying in my MRI tomb and doggedly reciting the poem against the terrible rapping, I realized what saved me..."

"Maxine Kumin's practical yet sensual New England reflections are a gift to any lover of the country."-New York Times Book Review

"Kumin, bless her heart, just gets better and better."-Library Journal

In addition to twelve volumes of poetry, Maxine Kumin has published books of essays, short stories, and novels, and collaborated on four children's books with the late Anne Sexton. The recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, she has also served as the Poet Laureate and was, until her recent controversial resignation, a chancellor at the Academy of American Poets. She lives with her husband, Victor, on a farm in central New Hampshire.

Table of Contents

Part One
Excerpts from a June Journal
Beans
June 1, 1991: Sleeping Late
June 16, 1991: Final Foal
Journal Entry, PoBiz, Texas
Notes from My Journal, Kyoto, December 1984

Part Two
Interstices
Swimming and Writing
Motherhood and Poetics
October 4, 1995
For Anne at Passover
Recitations
First Loves

Part Three
An Appreciation of Marianne Moore's Selected Letters
This Curious Silent Unrepresented Life
Josephine Jacobsen
Back to the Fairground: Mona Van Duyn
A Postcard from the Volcano
Essay on Robert Frost

Part Four
Trochee, Trimeter, and the MRI: On A Shropshire Lad
Gymnastics: The Villanelle
A Way of Staying Sane
Word for Word: "Poem for My Son"
Scrubbed Up and Sent to School

Part Five
Keynote Address, PEN-New Eng