Maxine Kumin

Your Monday Vitamin

I had a lovely correspondence with Maxine Kumin for years before her death. She graciously responded to my editing suggestion for her poem, “Oblivion,” and it began a literary friendship. Here’s her wonderful New Year’s poem:

New Year’s Eve 1959

remembering Anne Sexton and Jack Geiger

This was the way we used to party:
lamps unplugged, shoved in the closet
rugs rolled up, furniture pushed back
Glenn Miller singles on the spindle.

There was the poet kicking off her shoes
to jitterbug with the Physician
for Social Responsibility
the only time they ever met

and he pecking his head to the beat
swinging her out on the stalk of his arm
setting all eight gores of her skirt
twirling, then hauling her in for a Fred

Astaire session of deep dips
and both of them cutting out to strut
humming along with the riffs
that punctuated “Chattanooga Choo Choo.”

This was after Seoul and before Saigon.
Coke was still a carbonated drink
we added rum to.  There was a French wine
but someone had misplaced the curlicue

and a not-yet famous novelist
magicked the cork out on the hinge
of the back door to “Sunrise Serenade”
and dance was the dark enabler.

Lights off a long moment at midnight
(squeals and false moans) madcap Anne
long dead now and Jack snowily
balding who led the drive to halt the bomb

and I alone am saved to tell you
how they could jive.

Maxine Kumin