![]() They installed extra phone lines in their houses so that they would never have to hang up on each other, and when either of them wanted to talk about poetry, she would whistle into the phone and the other would hear it and come to listen. When she started writing again, it was at the Boston Center for Adult Education, and there she met another suburban housewife who was also a talented poet: Anne Sexton. So she stopped writing poetry for awhile. And then of course I forgive him because I think he was only four or five years older than I was.” The one thing I learned from that was never, ever do that to a young student, because you simply cannot predict what somebody who is 17 or 18 years old is going to be like in five years. I thought the fact that they were metered and rhymed was pretty good. I had no comprehension of the fact that I was writing flowery, romantic sonnets. I had led a comparatively sheltered life, at least intellectually, and I was not at all prepared for this. ![]() I didn’t write another poem for years and years and years. She said, “That just simply turned me off of poetry. She turned in a set of sonnets, and Stegner wrote across the top: “Say it with flowers but for God’s sake don’t write poems about it.” Kumin was crushed. She went to Radcliffe, where she took a writing class from Wallace Stegner. In suffering, seek salvation, was the message.” This reinforced what I already knew from observing my father’s dedication to work: one must be prepared to endure every hardship to be saved. ![]() She said, “In kindergarten at the Covenant Sisters of Joseph, conveniently next door to the house I grew up in, I was told stories of martyrdom and saints. Her family was Jewish, but she went to Catholic school. It’s the birthday of Maxine Kumin born in Philadelphia (1925). “At the Pitch” by Maxine Kumin, from Where I Live: New & Selected Poems 1990-2010.
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