SOURCE: "Weights and Measures," in Shenandoah, Vol. XVII, No. 2, Winter, 1966, pp. 91-102.

Stuart is an American educator and poet, and has served as poetry editor and eventually editor-in-chief of Shenandoah since 1976. Below, he admires Kumin's control of her subject matter, the domain of childhood, in The Privilege.

[T]he title of Mrs. Kumin's collection, The Privilege, [is taken] from one of Joseph Conrad's letters. The passage she cites closes, "One must drag the ball and chain of one's selfhood to the end. It is the price one pays for the devilish and divine privilege of thought."

For Mrs. Kumin, as the Conrad quote implies, the privilege is also a burden, and the poems in her book have an amazing internal balance of both these evaluations of consciousness. Balance and control are central achievements of her poetry, won by an unflinching attempt to "bear out hope to the edge...