Maxine Kumin
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Maxine Kumin is considered one of the best Jewish American poets of her time. She has won a Pulitzer Prize in 1973 for her work in Up Country. She has been compared to Anne Sexton, who was a fellow American confessionalist poet. Confessionalist poets tend to focus their poetry on personal matters that took place in their lives. For example, Kumin discusses the inner lives of her characters in her personal poems. She is considered a naturalist feminist because she gives her utmost importance to ecological things, such as plants, animals, the overall environment surrounding her. Kumin “asserts that her connection with animals is essential to her work as a poet, and later implies that through her association with them she has discovered a creatural self that is deeper and better than the human self” (Lyman, 23). To some she is not only ecological, but and ecological feminist. Unlike other confessionalist poets who wrote mainly about despair and depression, Kumin focuses her writing on happier things, such as family life, farming, subjects of life and nature, and loss. Her first published writings included Connecting the Dots, Nurture, Looking for Luck, Up Country: Poems of New England, The Long Approach, and House, Bridge, and Fountain Gate. She has been recognized for her tremendous work and the attention that she drew from women in the American society. Critics have even compared her work to Henry David Thoreau and Robert Frost. Kumin became an important figure in the feminist literary society.
She was born and raised in Philadelphia to Jewish parents. She grew up on a farm and was always surrounded by animals, which is reflected in her poetry. Kumins “poetry is political and environmental, she is sometimes public about the personal, and the poems in this work illustrate both by kind and degree how she presents the relationships between these concerns of her poetry” (Griffin, 103). Her love for animals and nature is everlasting and can be read in most of her poetry such as in The Long Marriage. Her inspiration to write came from her best friend Anne Sexton whom she met while she was attending classes for poetry. Her work in Up Country: Poems of New England talks about her observations on rural life. From the collection of Up Country, comes the story called Woodchucks. In this poem, Kumin uses extremely symbolic diction when talking about sensitive issues, such as war and killing.
In Woodchucks, the gardener is annoyed with the woodchucks because they are eating and vandalizing the garden. He decides to put an end to this problem by purchasing cyanide gas to kill the woodchucks. This plan backfires and the woodchucks continue to destroy her plants. His frustration builds up and she finally decides to purchase a rifle to kill the woodchucks.
In the first stanza, the reader can clearly see that the gardener is annoyed with the woodchucks because they are destroying her garden. In order to get rid of this problem, he attempts to eliminate them painlessly by using cyanide gas. He hopes that this will work, but her first attempt is a failure. Using cyanide gas to kill the woodchucks is symbolic because that is what the Nazis did when trying to eradicate the Jews from their presence. When using gas, one does not have to look at its victim when they are put to rest. The Nazis used these gassing methods to kill the Jews during the Holocaust. This poem is extremely ironic because the woodchucks symbolize the Jewish people during the Holocaust. Kumin uses her words carefully and wisely to describe the pain she felt for the loss of millions of Jews.
Furthermore in the second and third stanza, the gardener is outraged because his first attempt was not successful. Meanwhile, the woodchucks continue to eat and destroy the garden. In lines 10-12, the gardener is irritated saying, ” They brought down the marigolds / and then took over the vegetable patch / nipping the broccoli shoots, beheading the carrots” (10-12). The gardener talks about how the woodchucks are destroying her vegetable patch and “beheading” the carrots. Usage of words such as “brought down” and “beheading” suggest that Kumin is not very happy with what the Nazis did to the Jews, and she is wanting to convey a message to her readers that injustice and immorality exists within everyone. From a feminist perspective, Kumin is trying to say that man is always responsible for wrong doings. During the Holocaust, it was Adolf Hitler who was in charge of the army, and he was the one who was responsible for what happened to the Jews. Her connotative language also suggests that she wants to reader to visualize and empathize about the activities that went on during the war. The reader can see that the gardener was infuriated by the woodchucks wrong doings and because of this, he decides to take the violence to a higher level.
The third stanza has a more violent and angry approach to it. The gardener in turn pulls out the rifle to put an end to her misery. The speaker is trying to say that he is actually a very calm and peaceful person who has been driven mad. It is an obsession for him to kill these woodchucks now. Kumin is noting that it is in each and every individual to feel and get this way. When people are determined to do something, they will take extreme measures to accomplish it. Once again, she is referring back to when the Nazis mercilessly slaughtered the Jews. They were treated as if they were not humans, by being kept in the worst condition possible. They were kept in concentration camps where they were left for dead. Millions of Jews were killed because the Nazis were selfish people, and they wanted to wipe out the whole Jewish community. In addition, the reader gets this message that the woodchucks provoked the gardener to become a murderer.
Kumin describes the actual shooting in a very emotional and vivid way, using words such as “baby” and “mother”. This makes the reader realize that the gardener is really affected by the killings. Even though it may look like the gardener was ruthless, he felt somewhat guilty was what had happened. In the fourth stanza, the killer instinct comes out in the gardener. For example, the gardener has become so outraged that he actually kills a mother woodchuck. The tone in this