Poetry Quotes by Maxine Kumin

Poetry makes nothing happen. It survives in the valley of its saying.

— Maxine Kumin

There is an extraordinary degree of amity among Washington poets. They hang together. You would be hard pressed to find that in…

— Maxine Kumin

Women are not supposed to have uteruses, especially in poems.

— Maxine Kumin

I would not recommend poetry as a career. In the first place, it's impossible in this time and place - in this…

— Maxine Kumin

So many poems you go into and come up empty.

— Maxine Kumin

If I'm working on a poem, it's at the forefront of my mind; I'm working on it when I'm cooking dinner or…

— Maxine Kumin

The tougher the form the easier it is for me to handle the poem, because the form gives permission to be very…

— Maxine Kumin

To write about the monstrous sense of alienation the poet feels in this culture of polarized hatreds is a way of staying…

— Maxine Kumin

I've reached a point in life where it would be easy to let down my guard and write simple imagistic poems. But…

— Maxine Kumin

One way of ending the poem is to turn it back on itself, like a serpent with its tail in its mouth.

— Maxine Kumin

I have a vast 'bone pile' of stillborn or abandoned poems along with jottings and wisps from the great beyond that I…

— Maxine Kumin

I didn't write my poems because I wanted to, they were wrung from me. I had to write them.

— Maxine Kumin