Maxine Kumin Quotes

• We are, each of us, our own prisoner. We are locked up in our own story.

  Maxine Kumin

  Writing, Stories, Prisoner

  Maxine Kumin (1978). “The retrieval system: poems”, Viking Pr

  53 Copy quote

• Cherish your wilderness.

  Maxine Kumin

  Wilderness, Cherish

  8 Copy quote

• When Sleeping Beauty wakes up, she is almost fifty years old

  Maxine Kumin

  Sleep, Years, Wake Up

  17 Copy quote

• It is important to act as if bearing witness matters.

  Maxine Kumin

  Important, Matter, Bearing Witness

  Maxine Kumin (2000). “Always Beginning: Essays on a Life in Poetry”

  13 Copy quote

• To write about the monstrous sense of alienation the poet feels in this culture of polarized hatreds is a way of staying sane. With the poem, I reach out to an audience equally at odds with official policy, and I celebrate our mutual humanness in an inhuman world.

  Maxine Kumin

  Writing, Odds, Hatred

  Maxine Kumin (2000). “Always Beginning: Essays on a Life in Poetry”

  16 Copy quote

• I would not recommend poetry as a career. In the first place, it's impossible in this time and place - in this culture - to make poetry a career. The writing of poetry is one thing. It's an obsession, the scratching of a divine itch, and has nothing to do with money. You can, however, make a career out of being a poet by teaching, traveling around, and giving lectures. It's a thin living at best.

  Maxine Kumin

  Teaching, Writing, Careers

  16 Copy quote

• Love, we are a small pond.

  Maxine Kumin

  Love, Ponds

  Maxine Kumin (1970). “The nightmare factory”

  22 Copy quote

• Nature is a catchment of sorrows.

  Maxine Kumin

  Nature, Sorrow

  "Go Be a King in a Field of Weeds" by Carol Muske, www.nytimes.com. November 5, 1989.

  7 Copy quote

• Everything pays for growing tame.

  Maxine Kumin

  Growing, Pay

  13 Copy quote

• The time on either side of now stands fast.

  Maxine Kumin

  Time, Sides

  4 Copy quote

• I didn't write my poems because I wanted to, they were wrung from me. I had to write them.

  Maxine Kumin

  Writing, Poetry, Wanted

  9 Copy quote

• One way of ending the poem is to turn it back on itself, like a serpent with its tail in its mouth.

  Maxine Kumin

  Poetry, Tails, Mouths

  9 Copy quote

• God serves the choosy. They know what to want.

  Maxine Kumin

  God, Want, Choosy

  Maxine Kumin (1965). “The privilege”

  9 Copy quote

• Poetry
  makes nothing happen.
  It survives
  in the valley of its saying.

  Maxine Kumin

  Poetry, Valleys, Happens

  Maxine Kumin (2015). “The Pawnbroker's Daughter: A Memoir”, p.40, W. W. Norton & Company

  7 Copy quote

• To build is to dwell.

  Maxine Kumin

  Building

  4 Copy quote

• My writing time needs to surround itself with empty stretches, or at least unpeopled ones, for the writing takes place in an area of suspension as in a hanging nest that is almost entirely encapsulated.

  Maxine Kumin

  Writing, Needs, Nests

  Maxine Kumin (1996). “Women, Animals & Vegetables: Essays & Stories”

  4 Copy quote

• I'm going home the old way with a light hand on the reins making the long approach.

  Maxine Kumin

  Women, Home, Light

  Maxine Kumin (1987). “In deep: country essays”, Viking Pr

  7 Copy quote

• Women are not supposed to have uteruses, especially in poems.

  Maxine Kumin

  Women, Poetry, Uterus

  7 Copy quote

• Here on the drawing board fingers and noses leak from the air brush maggots lie under if i should die before if i should die in the back room stacked up in smooth boxes like soapflakes or tunafish wait the undreamt of.

  Maxine Kumin

  Dream, Lying, Air

  Maxine Kumin (1970). “The nightmare factory”

  10 Copy quote

• ... people get confidential at midnight.

  Maxine Kumin

  People, Midnight, Confidential

  Maxine Kumin (1974). “The designated heir”, Viking Adult

  11 Copy quote

• Sometimes tradition is a way of keeping going.

  Maxine Kumin

  Way, Sometimes, Tradition

  Maxine Kumin (1974). “The designated heir”, Viking Adult

  7 Copy quote

• The tougher the form the easier it is for me to handle the poem, because the form gives permission to be very gut honest about feelings.

  Maxine Kumin

  Giving, Feelings, Honest

  7 Copy quote

• And the pond's stillness nippled as if by rain instead is pocked with life.

  Maxine Kumin

  Life, Rain, Ponds

  4 Copy quote

• Can it be I am the only Jew residing in Danville, Kentuchy, looking for matzoh in the Safeway and the A & P?

  Maxine Kumin

  Judaism, Jew

  Maxine Kumin (2000). “Always Beginning: Essays on a Life in Poetry”

  4 Copy quote

• Meanwhile let us cast one shadow in air and water.

  Maxine Kumin

  Air, Water, Shadow

  4 Copy quote

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