Quotes by Maxine Kumin - Page 1

To build is to dwell.
Maxine Kumin / Poet
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Cherish your wilderness.
Maxine Kumin / Poet
Cherish
Wilderness
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Love, we are a small pond.
Maxine Kumin / Poet
Love
Ponds
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Everything pays for growing tame.
Maxine Kumin / Poet
Growing
Pay
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Nature is a catchment of sorrows.
Maxine Kumin / Poet
Nature
Sorrow
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... people get confidential at midnight.
Maxine Kumin / Poet
Confidential
Midnight
People
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The time on either side of now stands fast.
Maxine Kumin / Poet
Time
Sides
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So many poems you go into and come up empty.
Maxine Kumin / Poet
Empty
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God serves the choosy. They know what to want.
Maxine Kumin / Poet
God
Choosy
Want
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Sometimes tradition is a way of keeping going.
Maxine Kumin / Poet
Sometimes
Tradition
Way
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Meanwhile let us cast one shadow in air and water.
Maxine Kumin / Poet
Air
Shadow
Water
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It is important to act as if bearing witness matters.
Maxine Kumin / Poet
Bearing Witness
Important
Matter
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When Sleeping Beauty wakes up, she is almost fifty years old
Maxine Kumin / Poet
Sleep
Wake Up
Years
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Writing is my salvation. If I didn't write, what would I do?
Maxine Kumin / Poet
Salvation
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Women are not supposed to have uteruses, especially in poems.
Maxine Kumin / Poet
Women
Poetry
Uterus
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A lot of people use the dictionary to find out how to spell words.
Maxine Kumin / Poet
Dictionary
Spell
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Poetry makes nothing happen. It survives in the valley of its saying.
Maxine Kumin / Poet
Poetry
Happens
Valleys
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We are, each of us, our own prisoner. We are locked up in our own story.
Maxine Kumin / Poet
Prisoner
Stories
Writing
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And the pond's stillness nippled as if by rain instead is pocked with life.
Maxine Kumin / Poet
Life
Ponds
Rain
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I'm going home the old way with a light hand on the reins making the long approach.
Maxine Kumin / Poet
Women
Home
Light
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I didn't write my poems because I wanted to, they were wrung from me. I had to write them.
Maxine Kumin / Poet
Poetry
Wanted
Writing
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One way of ending the poem is to turn it back on itself, like a serpent with its tail in its mouth.
Maxine Kumin / Poet
Poetry
Mouths
Tails
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That's my prescription for a happy marriage - marry someone who doesn't do anything similar to what you do.
Maxine Kumin / Poet
Happy Marriage
Marry
Prescription
Similar
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Can it be I am the only Jew residing in Danville, Kentuchy, looking for matzoh in the Safeway and the A & P?
Maxine Kumin / Poet
Jew
Judaism
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The tougher the form the easier it is for me to handle the poem, because the form gives permission to be very gut honest about feelings.
Maxine Kumin / Poet
Feelings
Giving
Honest
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There is an extraordinary degree of amity among Washington poets. They hang together. You would be hard pressed to find that in Manhattan.
Maxine Kumin / Poet
Amity
Extraordinary
Manhattan
Hang
Poets
Pressed
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I don't think I've ever felt terribly comfortable writing about my body. First of all, I think I took my body for granted for so many years. I abused it a lot.
Maxine Kumin / Poet
Abuse
Granted
First Of All
Terribly
So Many Years
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I was a very, I think, lonely kid, very introspective. I felt very much at odds with my environment and my culture... Probably a genetic flaw. I can't really explain it.
Maxine Kumin / Poet
Introspective
Lonely
Odds
Explain
Flaw
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My writing time needs to surround itself with empty stretches, or at least unpeopled ones, for the writing takes place in an area of suspension as in a hanging nest that is almost entirely encapsulated.
Maxine Kumin / Poet
Needs
Nests
Writing
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I have a vast 'bone pile' of stillborn or abandoned poems along with jottings and wisps from the great beyond that I tend to scan. Sometimes that leads somewhere, and sometimes the Muse is just on sabbatical.
Maxine Kumin / Poet
Abandoned
Muse
Sabbatical
Somewhere
Beyond
Bone
Vast
Leads
Pile
Scan
Tend
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If I'm working on a poem, it's at the forefront of my mind; I'm working on it when I'm cooking dinner or stretched out on the sofa. But if I don't really have it by the 10th draft, I know it just isn't going to jell.
Maxine Kumin / Poet
Cooking
Dinner
Draft
Forefront
Poem
Sofa
Stretched
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Here on the drawing board fingers and noses leak from the air brush maggots lie under if i should die before if i should die in the back room stacked up in smooth boxes like soapflakes or tunafish wait the undreamt of.
Maxine Kumin / Poet
Dream
Air
Lying
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I've reached a point in life where it would be easy to let down my guard and write simple imagistic poems. But I don't want to write poems that aren't necessary. I want to write poems that matter, that have an interesting point of view.
Maxine Kumin / Poet
Let Down
Point Of View
Guard
Reached
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To write about the monstrous sense of alienation the poet feels in this culture of polarized hatreds is a way of staying sane. With the poem, I reach out to an audience equally at odds with official policy, and I celebrate our mutual humanness in an inhuman world.
Maxine Kumin / Poet
Hatred
Odds
Writing
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The thing that's depressing is teaching graduate students today and discovering that they don't know simple elemental facts of grammar. They really do not know how to scan a line; they've never been taught to scan a line. Many of them don't know the difference between 'lie' and 'lay,' let alone 'its' and 'it's.' And they're in graduate school!
Maxine Kumin / Poet
Depressing
Discovering
Graduate School
Elemental
Lie
Graduate
Lay
Scan
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I would not recommend poetry as a career. In the first place, it's impossible in this time and place - in this culture - to make poetry a career. The writing of poetry is one thing. It's an obsession, the scratching of a divine itch, and has nothing to do with money. You can, however, make a career out of being a poet by teaching, traveling around, and giving lectures. It's a thin living at best.
Maxine Kumin / Poet
Careers
Teaching
Writing
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Maxine Kumin Quotes - Page 1

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