Which of her poetic peers does Maxine Kumin resemble? Unlike Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, she keeps her demons bridled. Unlike Elizabeth Bishop or May Swenson, she is bawdily personal. Like Adrienne Rich, she makes us pay respectful attention to images of strong female identity, yet she avoids ideology. And is there another poet who finds or invents such a sweet male alter ego [as Henry Manley, the country neighbor who is one of the several recurring figures in "Our Ground Time Here Will Be Brief"]?…

Typical of Maxine Kumin's art are the sensory weight, the play of alliteration and assonance sliding into the closing couplets, the perfectly expressive halting and crystallizing rhythms [in the poems about Henry]….

Mirroring his creator, Henry Manley is a supervisor, a capable countryperson of multiple skills. He will die before the poet does, and he is one of her many means of...