SOURCE: "Ecstasy and Irony," in Poetry, Vol. CLIX, No. 2, November, 1992, pp. 99-113.

In the following excerpt, Baker highly regards Kumin's work and points out that "it is nature that evokes her most passionate, exact writing, and provides a significant model for her to instruct or explain people to us."

Maxine Kumin is, and for a long time has been, one of our most widely praised poets. Her tenth collection of poems, Looking for Luck, is representative of her accomplishment, style, and vision. She writes like a lot of poets these days; or, more likely, many try to write like her. Her poems are never qualified by anything less than maturity, grace, and sureness of touch. It's as if her strong, good poems were found rather than composed. As if. Altogether appropriate for an ars poetica is Kumin's favorite figure of the horse, as companion and model:

 Whenever I...