I hope you will enjoy these quotes from Maxine Kumin about her writing process (except for the last ones)...
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I tend to wait for a poem to come to me. I feel that it is at least to some extent a mystical process, because when a poem is working, getting ready to be written, I know it. I know it with an absolute physical sureness.
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Once a poem begins, I can make a total commitment. It doesn’t matter if it takes a day, a week, or six weeks. I can stay with it because I have faith in that original impulse.
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I so often begin in total chaos, not knowing what it is that I’m doing, just knowing that I have this insistent rhythm, or I have this concept, that I want to fiddle around with. And it isn’t until I get the poem out that I find out what it was saying, what I wanted to say.
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The life inside my poems was worth whatever it took to get there: guilt and compromise, tenacity, an inner secrecy that hid behind the façade of suburban housewife, Girl Scout leader, swimming instructor, chauffeur, and straw boss.
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So many of my poems will go through thirty-five or forty different permutations. It’s not at all unusual for me.
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One way of ending the poem is to turn it back on itself, like a serpent with a tail in its mouth.
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The distillation of everyday life experiences is exactly what I am trying to particularize and order in poetry.
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I think that some of the worst poems in the English language are written by poets about how they make a poem.
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Poetry is an oral tradition. I think it immensely enhances the person’s poetry for an audience to hear it in the poet’s voice.
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The things that I like to read are very often the journals and letters, full of despair, of other writers. There’s something very comforting in that—also something very voyeuristic.
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Maxine Kumin (b. 1925) is the author of sixteen books of poetry, five novels, A book of short stories, five books of essays, twelve children's books, and four children's books co-authored with her poet friend, Anne Sexton. She has received many awards for her poetry, and continues to teach, in the New England College Low-Residency MFA Program.
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Comments: 26
Thanks for the wonderful quotes.
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Enjoyed the quotes.
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(I think this would be a nice addition to my new poetry group.)
However I am fascinated by poems that talk about the process of writing the poem. Not saying they are good or bad but certainly fascinated by them. Attempted one myself and when the poem was complete realised I was generally pleased with the result. Where it didn't work for me in the poem was where I (in anguish drew myself, the author into the poem. It was It Takes Two Baby which appears in Gather. Sorry I don't yet know what to set that so you can go straight to it.
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I love every word of your sharing unusually usual !!
Love to quote this :
"One way of ending the poem is to turn it back on itself,
like a serpent with a tail in its mouth."
Poetry Quotes