Maxine Kumin's sixth collection of poems is called The Retrieval System, and it is a generous gathering of 35 poems. I would characterize her work as straightforward, ruminative, prosaic, and pleasant to read: she is intelligent and thoughtful; she is also at the prime of her own life, her mid-Fifties, and in a position to speak plainly and with a kind of personal authority that convinces the reader. She is also writing a poetry of retirement, so to speak, of observation, of civility and domesticity. This is, when one thinks of her work in that way, a poetry that partakes of a very ancient and widespread tradition, in the Classical World, in the Orient, and the Middle East. That is, the poet has grown up in cities, and been educated at good schools, the poet has been cultivated in the literary life of the times, but then, towards middle...