The Pulitzer Prize-winning poet writes about her life, the creative process, and the work of other poets.

Kumin reflects on the process of writing poetry and on life in the country

From as little as the snail to as big as the giraffe, from the thundering mastodon of long ago to the ordinary backyard squirrel of today, the animals in this book inspire our imagination. Here is a fascinating cornucopia that exudes a whimsical affection and respect for the creatures with whom we share our kingdom.

This luminous collection is Maxine Kumin's twelfth volume of poetry, the first since her remarkable memoir, Inside the Halo. Themes of loyalty, longevity, and recovery appear here, along with poems addressing the eminent dead: Wordsworth, Gorki, Rukeyser, and others. "Inescapably, many poems come up out of the earth I live on and tend to," Kumin says.

Poems about the inner and outer realities of creatures, plants, houses, lovers, and others in the New England landscape.

In her first collection since 1982, this Pulizter Prize-winning poet redefines and expands upon her themes of home and family by showing them in the context of survival in a nuclear age

"The power that Kumin draws from and brings to literature is potent and seemingly inexhaustible."―Booklist Here Maxine Kumin's signature nature poems are shaken up and invigorated by the darker, human realities. She focuses our attention on the pleasures of horse-keeping with poems such as "The Zen of Mucking Out," then exhorts us to "Please Pay Attention," decrying Dick Cheney's "canned hunting / where you don't stay to pluck / the feathers." With equanimity, Kumin faces the disappointments and joys of sixty years of marriage―ending with the unspoken question of "Which of us will go down first...."