Book Review: "Where I Live" by Maxine Kumin

October 05, 2010 / Tom Rubenoff, Senior Editor

Most of the books I review end up given to friends or donated to the public library, but as I look at the forest of post-its bristling from my copy of “Where I Live”, what can I say? The evidence is overwhelming. I am forced to admit that love this book. This one’s a keeper.

I didn’t intend to fall in love. As a reviewer I try to maintain a professional objective distance from my subject so as to omit no grammatical error or jarring accidental change of voice from my relentless and ruthless pursuit of flaws. “Spare the red pen and spoil the poet” is my motto. Yet Maxine’s poetry seduced me with its clarity, wisdom and fearlessness, so that now I have (almost) only praise for it.

Well, all right. I don’t think that “Game” qualifies as a poem. I think it is a paragraph with two sentences that rhyme at the end. I realize that this is a subjective judgment based on a seemingly squishy definition: poetry. Also I am not a laureate-level poet like Maxine.

But my unworthiness to judge notwithstanding, otherwise this is a book in which horses die like beloved children, dogs live a Zen experience and fascinatingly spare pastoral truths explore life with poignancy and zeal.

I particularly enjoyed the poems, “Hay” (“… The old baler cobbled from /other parts, repaired last winter / cussed at in the shed in finger- / splitting cold….”) and “The Rendezvous” that involves a metaphorical encounter with a bear. Not to mention international intrigue, cosmopolitanism and well defined and compelling poetic politics.

This book? Buy it. Buy it NOW.

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