Uncorseted

In her poem “Sonnets Uncorseted,” Maxine Kumin bemoans the sexist attitudes that constrained 20th-century American women poets. Immersed in motherhood and domesticity, she confesses to having been “Terrified of writing domestic poems,/… anathema to the prevailing clique of male pooh-bahs[.]”

In her case at least, the pooh-bahs did not have the last word. Kumin, who died in 2014 at the age of 89, would triumph over her terror and produce distinctive conversational verse drawn from everyday experience. A 1973 Pulitzer Prize confirmed her achievement, and many other awards would follow. /

Julia M. Klein, forward.com

The Pawnbroker’s Daughter: A Memoir
By Maxine Kumin
W.W. Norton & Company, 176 pages, $25.95