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The Retrieval System
Kumin's sixth collection of poems speaks of the ways in which some sense of lost loved ones is retrieved in the features of present-day things
- GenresPoetry
80 pages, Paperback
Published May 25, 1978
28 people want to read
About the author
Maxine Kumin
135 books77 followersMaxine 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.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
November 11, 2015
"Fact: it is people who fade, / it is animals that retrieve them."
Maxine Kumin, in her title poem, recognizes the faces of the dead in the living animals around her; despite this line, she does not allow the people to fade. She reinvents them, reintroduces them to the reader's present, be it her rugged aged neighbor Henry Manley, her daughter in Europe, Anne Sexton, or her old self sunbathing during an evanescent summer in Berkeley. She wields a Tolstoy-esque description of farm living: chasing the goats, mowing over toads, sending an ewe lamb off to slaughter. With a discriminating eye she notes the movement of animals through timothy grass, the pot-cheese texture of snow, a horse at the paddock fence--giving rapt attention and tender meaning to the rural details of her everyday life.
Maxine Kumin, in her title poem, recognizes the faces of the dead in the living animals around her; despite this line, she does not allow the people to fade. She reinvents them, reintroduces them to the reader's present, be it her rugged aged neighbor Henry Manley, her daughter in Europe, Anne Sexton, or her old self sunbathing during an evanescent summer in Berkeley. She wields a Tolstoy-esque description of farm living: chasing the goats, mowing over toads, sending an ewe lamb off to slaughter. With a discriminating eye she notes the movement of animals through timothy grass, the pot-cheese texture of snow, a horse at the paddock fence--giving rapt attention and tender meaning to the rural details of her everyday life.
March 22, 2015
A powerful book of poetry, touching in on life on a farm in New England as seen through the eyes of a quiet watcher with deep emotion. I particular loved the section entitled "Henry Manley," a series of poems about her elderly farmer neighbor, who wasn't much of a talker, but taught her so much about how to take care of the land and animals. It is an unlikely friendship and it's beautiful how she documents their connection.
May 28, 2012
"My Father's Necktie
...
When we die, all four of us, in
whatever sequence, the designs
will fall off like face masks
and the rayon ravel from this hazy version
of a man who wore hard colors recklessly
and hid out in the foreign
bargain basements of his feelings."
...
When we die, all four of us, in
whatever sequence, the designs
will fall off like face masks
and the rayon ravel from this hazy version
of a man who wore hard colors recklessly
and hid out in the foreign
bargain basements of his feelings."
November 30, 2007
I've always been pleased with her images, her use of figurative language.
March 30, 2008
A beautiful, accessible little volume I lucked into finding at McKays. She was a close friend of Anne Sextion's, but I'd never read her poetry. Lovely.
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July 28, 2011Takes you right back to how it was for her & for poetry just after Anne Sexton died.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews