Here are some excerpts from an interview I did with Maxine Kumin. It was first published in The Country and Abroad in the September, 1999 issue.
Kelly: Someone who wrote about you--and I'm putting this in quotes--said that you "insist upon order," that this is important to you.
Kumin: It's personally important to me as a poet. That's my voice and my style. I don't necessarily insist on it in the poetry of others. There's lots of chaotic poetry, free verse poetry, that I love. But for myself, working in form has been liberation. It's the way most of my poems come, not always all of them, but most of them. The harder ones are invariably formal--in some sort of stanzaic pattern--just because that seems to set up some sort of outside limit within which I can feel free to say the hard truths.
Kelly: Well, it's interesting to me because I trained as a medievalist, and order, as I'm sure you know, was one of the overarching concerns of medieval writers.
Kumin: Well, I think order is for me a way of dealing with the chaos of impressions and my own chaotic feelings.
Kelly: Who were the primary literary influences on you?
Kumin: They were all dead white males.
Kelly: [Laughing] Yes?
Kumin: Auden, primarily. I have said this over and over when asked, but I really did cut my teeth on the Auden tetrameter line and on the rhyme scheme. I try very hard to emulate it, although I'm sure it doesn't show.
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Kelly: I [have] asked Donald Hall if he had changed his form according to whatever the subject of the poem was, and he said no, that form seems to come first.
Kumin: Well, yeah, I think it does. I mean, there's the raw material of the poem, and then as you start to write it, it takes on a form. And then once you see what it seems to want to be, you hew to that as you compose. I don't know--it makes its own rules, and it's very mysterious how it happens. And I'm not sure I really want to know. Because if I knew how it happened, then I would try to reproduce it all the time.
Kelly: You would become self-conscious about it?
Kumin: I think that would spoil it.
Kelly: Consciousness destroys the act?
Kumin: Well, to a certain degree. You need some consciousness. I'm not one of those people who can write a poem in ten minutes. My work goes through millions of drafts. And sometimes the smaller the poem, the more ridiculous [the number of] drafts it goes through.
Kelly: Well, that makes sense to me. Because the briefer you are, I suppose every word or syllable counts the more.
Kumin: That's true.
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Kelly: Are there any current literary trends that you like or dislike?
Kumin: I love seeing what women are writing.
Kelly: In terms of...?
Kumin: I love seeing the poetry that women are writing. I think that women are catching up. They're writing about their bodies, they're writing about children, they're writing about rearing children, about their marriages and their love lives, and all those areas that were taboo, forbidden, spat upon, et cetera. I mean, I have never forgotten James Dickey, the late James Dickey, saying about Sexton's poems...he said, "That was the straw that broke this camel's back." Of course, HE wrote a book about buggery.
Kelly: Someone who wrote about you--and I'm putting this in quotes--said that you "insist upon order," that this is important to you.
Kumin: It's personally important to me as a poet. That's my voice and my style. I don't necessarily insist on it in the poetry of others. There's lots of chaotic poetry, free verse poetry, that I love. But for myself, working in form has been liberation. It's the way most of my poems come, not always all of them, but most of them. The harder ones are invariably formal--in some sort of stanzaic pattern--just because that seems to set up some sort of outside limit within which I can feel free to say the hard truths.
Kelly: Well, it's interesting to me because I trained as a medievalist, and order, as I'm sure you know, was one of the overarching concerns of medieval writers.
Kumin: Well, I think order is for me a way of dealing with the chaos of impressions and my own chaotic feelings.
Kelly: Who were the primary literary influences on you?
Kumin: They were all dead white males.
Kelly: [Laughing] Yes?
Kumin: Auden, primarily. I have said this over and over when asked, but I really did cut my teeth on the Auden tetrameter line and on the rhyme scheme. I try very hard to emulate it, although I'm sure it doesn't show.
******************************
Kelly: I [have] asked Donald Hall if he had changed his form according to whatever the subject of the poem was, and he said no, that form seems to come first.
Kumin: Well, yeah, I think it does. I mean, there's the raw material of the poem, and then as you start to write it, it takes on a form. And then once you see what it seems to want to be, you hew to that as you compose. I don't know--it makes its own rules, and it's very mysterious how it happens. And I'm not sure I really want to know. Because if I knew how it happened, then I would try to reproduce it all the time.
Kelly: You would become self-conscious about it?
Kumin: I think that would spoil it.
Kelly: Consciousness destroys the act?
Kumin: Well, to a certain degree. You need some consciousness. I'm not one of those people who can write a poem in ten minutes. My work goes through millions of drafts. And sometimes the smaller the poem, the more ridiculous [the number of] drafts it goes through.
Kelly: Well, that makes sense to me. Because the briefer you are, I suppose every word or syllable counts the more.
Kumin: That's true.
**********************************
Kelly: Are there any current literary trends that you like or dislike?
Kumin: I love seeing what women are writing.
Kelly: In terms of...?
Kumin: I love seeing the poetry that women are writing. I think that women are catching up. They're writing about their bodies, they're writing about children, they're writing about rearing children, about their marriages and their love lives, and all those areas that were taboo, forbidden, spat upon, et cetera. I mean, I have never forgotten James Dickey, the late James Dickey, saying about Sexton's poems...he said, "That was the straw that broke this camel's back." Of course, HE wrote a book about buggery.