I’ve reached a point in life where it would be easy to let down my guard and write simple imagistic poems. But I don’t want to write poems that aren’t necessary. I want to write poems that matter, that have an interesting point of view. Maxine Kumin Read Quote
If I’m working on a poem, it’s at the forefront of my mind; I’m working on it when I’m cooking dinner or stretched out on the sofa. But if I don’t really have it by the 10th draft, I know it just isn’t going to jell. Maxine Kumin Read Quote
I was a very, I think, lonely kid, very introspective. I felt very much at odds with my environment and my culture… Probably a genetic flaw. I can’t really explain it. Maxine Kumin Read Quote
I don’t think I’ve ever felt terribly comfortable writing about my body. First of all, I think I took my body for granted for so many years. I abused it a lot. Maxine Kumin Read Quote
That’s my prescription for a happy marriage – marry someone who doesn’t do anything similar to what you do. Maxine Kumin Read Quote
The thing that’s depressing is teaching graduate students today and discovering that they don’t know simple elemental facts of grammar. They really do not know how to scan a line; they’ve never been taught to scan a line. Many of them don’t know the difference between ‘lie’ and ‘lay,’ let alone ‘its’ and ‘it’s.’ And they’re in graduate school! Maxine Kumin Read Quote
I have a vast ‘bone pile’ of stillborn or abandoned poems along with jottings and wisps from the great beyond that I tend to scan. Sometimes that leads somewhere, and sometimes the Muse is just on sabbatical. Maxine Kumin Read Quote
There is an extraordinary degree of amity among Washington poets. They hang together. You would be hard pressed to find that in Manhattan. Maxine Kumin Read Quote
