Maxine Kumin

Maxine Kumin

American writer and poet
Date of Birth: 06.06.1925
Country: USA

Content:
  1. Biography of Maxine Kumin
  2. Early Life and Education
  3. Writing Career
  4. Awards and Recognition
  5. Style and Influence
  6. Later Career and Legacy

Biography of Maxine Kumin

Maxine Kumin, born Maxine Winokur, was an American writer and poet known for her exceptional poetic talent. She served as the Poet Laureate of the United States from 1981 to 1981 and was the official poet of the Library of Congress. With her meticulous observations in her works, she was compared to Elizabeth Bishop, and her depictions of rural New England life were compared to Robert Frost.

Maxine Kumin

Early Life and Education

Maxine Kumin was born on June 6, 1925, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Jewish parents. She attended a Catholic preparatory and high school before earning a bachelor's degree in 1946 and a master's degree in 1948 from Radcliffe College. In June 1946, she married Victor Kumin, an engineering consultant, and they had three children together – two daughters and a son.

Maxine Kumin

Writing Career

In 1957, Maxine studied poetry with John Holmes at the Boston Center for Adult Education, where she met Anne Sexton, a future Pulitzer Prize winner. They maintained a close friendship until Sexton's suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning in 1974. Maxine taught English at Tufts University from 1958 to 1961 and again from 1965 to 1968. From 1961 to 1963, she conducted independent research at the Radcliffe Institute.

Maxine also held educational meetings as a visiting lecturer and poet at many American colleges and universities. She lived with her husband on a farm in Warner, New Hampshire, raising Arabian and short-distance racing horses from 1976 until her death in February 2014.

Awards and Recognition

Maxine Kumin received numerous awards throughout her career. In 1972, she was awarded the Eunice Tietjens Memorial Prize for Poetry. In 1973, she won the Pulitzer Prize for her poetry collection "Up Country." In 1995, she received the Aiken Taylor Award for Contemporary American Poetry, and her poetry book "Looking for Luck" was selected as the best book of poems in 1994. She was honored by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1980 and by the Academy of American Poets in 1986. She was also awarded the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize in 1999.

Style and Influence

Maxine Kumin was often compared to Elizabeth Bishop for her meticulous and detailed observations in her work. She also drew comparisons to Robert Frost for her frequent focus on rural New England life. She belonged to a group of poets that included Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, and Robert Lowell, among others. Unlike the confessional poets, she avoided high rhetoric and embraced a deceptively simple style that beautifully depicted the complex aspects of human existence. Throughout her career, Kumin sought to find a balance between the fleeting nature of life and the enduring manifestations of the physical world surrounding her.

Later Career and Legacy

Maxine Kumin taught poetry in the Master of Fine Arts program at New England College and served as the writing editor for "The Alaska Quarterly Review" literary journal. She was also a former member of the Board of Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets, alongside her fellow poet Carolyn Kizer. Maxine Kumin passed away on February 6, 2014, at her home in Warner, New Hampshire, after a year of declining health.

© BIOGRAPHS