10 February 2014
I was very sorry to learn of the death of Maxine Kumin.
Marilyn Webb sent the link to NYT obituary. Maxine spent four weeks at Knox a few years ago (quite a few) and ate dinner with us several times. At
that time we’d been thinking about remodeling the kitchen in our old house. We
didn’t raise the subject, but Maxine said, “How nice to eat in an
old-fashioned, unreconstructed kitchen.” I wrote to her later telling her that
she’d saved us a lot of money. Our daughter and her family live in the house
now, but the kitchen is still unreconstructed.
I wrote to Maxine last August after hearing her voice on NPR
and seeing her poem, “Xanthopia,” in The
New Yorker. She responded right away: Dear Bob: “Hearing from you was a
happy surprise. I imagine seeing the poem in the New Yorker reassured you that
I am still alive, which is a surprise to me too. I think that is my last poem.
I added it to my final book of poems which is coming from Norton next April,
titled And Short the Season, drawn
from Brittle Beauty, a sonnet by Henry Howard Earl of Surrey.”
She also commiserated us on the death of the two dogs that
were living with us when she visited.
Contra vim veneris,
Non herbam inveneris;
Contra vim mortis,
Non crescit herba in hortis.