SOURCE: St. Andrews, B. A. Review of Selected Poems, 1960-1990, by Maxine Kumin. World Literature Today 72, no. 3 (summer 1998): 623.

In the following review, St. Andrews assesses Selected Poems within the context of Kumin's career.

Back in the good old days when Maxine Kumin won the Pulitzer Prize for Up Country (1973), being a nature poet was almost to be expected for females. In fact, nature imagery has served not only Emily Dickinson but every other modern poet from Robinson Jeffers to Mary Oliver. Yet Kumin was, even back then, more than the usual categorical imperatives: New England farmer, naturalist, Jewish-American, woman poet.

To put this simply, Maxine Kumin is and has long been a writer's writer, composing not only a dozen books of poetry (the most recent of which is Connecting the Dots, 1997) but also four novels and a new prose collection. Women, Animals, and Vegetables. The Pulitzer and other...