Reviews for Looking for Luck: Poems

The average rating for Looking for Luck: Poems based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-07-20 00:00:00 Linda S. Bellville Kumin is at her best writing about farm life especially horses; she seems to have an affinity for those noble beasts. Almost every book she writes has an elegy for Anne Sexton, the one on here is not the her best. Her work improves with rereading.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-12-28 00:00:00 David Jennings People (her daughter, a poet friend, and a lover, among others), places (far away lands, beaches, her farm and forests, among others), creatures large and small (an elephant, a bear, horses, and dogs, among others), plants, trees, work, leisure, times of stress and times of delight . . . all fall under the watchful, wise gaze of Maxine Kumin. She brings her observations and insights to us with clarity and wonder and offers them to us for our own puzzling-out and pondering. Her opening prologue quote from Howard Nemerov gives us a compass for the territory she'll be covering and offers us a bearing to get us started as we enter these poems: PROLOGUE O swallows, swallows, poems are not The point. Finding again the world, That is the point. Where loveliness Adorns intelligible things Because the mind's eye lit the sun. (Howard Nemerov, as quoted in Looking for Luck: Poems, Maxine Kumin, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, originally published: 1992, paperback edition: 1993, p. 13) Windows into the world? Trails hacked out through the busyness of life? Gaps or breaks in the fog where we catch greater clarity? "Finding again the world . . ." "That is the point!" I offer up CREDO as a favorite from this collection and one I'll carry with me for many days to come: CREDO I believe in magic. I believe in the rights of animals to leap out of our skins as recorded in the Kiowa legend: Directly there was a bear where the boy had been as I believe in the resurrected wake-robin, first wet knob of trillium to knock in April at the underside of earth's door in central New Hampshire where bears are though still denned up at that early greening. I believe in living on grateful terms with the earth, with the black crumbles of ancient manure that sift through my fingers when I topdress the garden for winter. I believe in the wet springs of earthworms aroused out of season and in the bear, asleep now in the rock cave where my outermost pasture abuts the forest. I cede him a swale of chokeberries in August. I give the sow and her cub as much yardage as they desire when our paths intersect as does my horse shifting under me respectful but not cowed by our encounter. I believe in the gift of the horse, which is magic, their deep fear-snorts in play when the wind comes up, the ballet of nip and jostle, plunge and crow hop. I trust them to run from me, necks arched in a full swan's S, tails cocked up over their backs like plumes on a Cavalier's hat. I trust them to gallop back, skid to a stop, their nostrils level with my mouth, asking for my human breath that they may test its intent, taste the smell of it. I believe in myself as their sanctuary and the earth with its summer plumes of carrots, its clamber of peas, beans, masses of tendrils as mine. I believe in the acrobatics of boy into bear, the grace of animals in my keeping, the thrust to go on. (Maxine Kumin, Looking for Luck: Poems, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, originally published: 1992, paperback edition: 1993, p. 15-6) In this poem I've found my New Year's resolution for 2017: "living on grateful terms with the earth."