SOURCE: Cole, Henri. Review of Nurture, by Maxine Kumin. Poetry 156, no. 1 (April 1990): 48-50.

In the following review, Cole offers a positive assessment of Nurture, praising Kumin's “affectionately modest demeanor.”

Maxine Kumin is a senator for man and beast and earth. She speaks for the caribou, the manatee, the orca, the arctic fox, the Aleutian goose, the trumpeter swan, the dusky seaside sparrow, the broodmare, the grizzly bear, the Scotch Highland heifer, and all this only to begin a list, for there are also three generations of kin to consider and a plot of land to be worked. Please let me not be counted among those critics who devalue her “overabundance of maternal genes.” In a world where dolphins are sacrificed daily for our light lunches of tuna fish salad, should there not be one among us to take up their cause?

Fifteen years ago a classmate in college...