"Out of May's Shows Selected" by Walt Whitman

Here is a short poem by Walt Whitman for spring, the season of renewal.


OUT OF MAY'S SHOWS SELECTED

Apple orchards, the trees all cover'd with blossoms;
Wheat fields carpeted far and near in vital emerald green;
The eternal, exhaustless freshness of each early morning;
The yellow, golden, transparent haze of the warm afternoon sun;
The aspiring lilac bushes with profuse purple or white flowers.


Source: The Language of Spring: Poems for the Season of Renewal (2003), Selected by Robert Atwan, with an Introduction by Maxine Kumin

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

Two Quotations on Wilderness

WILDERNESS

Cherish your wilderness.

     -- Maxine Kumin

Earth has lost 10 percent of its wilderness since the early 1990s -- an area twice the size of Alaska, according to a new study in Current Biology. In all, we've lost roughly 1.2 million square miles of wilderness in recent decades, leaving 12 million square miles still intact.

     -- Vox.com, quoted in THE WEEK Magazine (September 23, 2016)

The Final Say

Quotations I have paired up for comparison

"How It Is" by Maxine W. Kumin : The Poetry Foundation

Read this poem that Maxine Kumin wrote shortly after the death of her closest friend Anne Sexton, and listen to an audio recording of her reading this poem: How It Is: "Shall I say how it is in your clothes? [ . . . ]"

Maxine W. Kumin

"Woodchucks" by Maxine Kumin : Poets.org

Read this "terribly autobiographical poem" by Maxine Kumin, and listen to a recording of her introducing and reading it: "Woodchucks"

Maxine Kumin : Poets.org

"Purgatory" by Maxine Kumin : Poem Hunter

Read this poem in which its author looks at William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet in a new light: "Purgatory" by Maxine Kumin

Maxine W. Kumin : The Poetry Foundation

"Sonnets Uncorseted" by Maxine W. Kumin : The Poetry Foundation

Read this sonnet sequence: Sonnets Uncorseted by Maxine W. Kumin : The Poetry Foundation: 1 / / She was twenty-two. He was fifty-three, / a duke, a widower with ten children.

Chrysanthemum: An Anthology
Poetry

"Family Reunion" by Maxine W. Kumin : The Poetry Foundation

Read this poem: Family Reunion by Maxine W. Kumin : The Poetry Foundation

Maxine W. Kumin

(Source of photo: The Poetry Foundation)

"The Revisionist Dream" by Maxine Kumin : The Poetry Archive

     American poet Maxine Kumin said that her poem "The Revisionist Dream" is about the suicide of American poet Anne Sexton in 1974 and that it is a villanelle. Read "The Revisionist Dream" by Maxine Kumin and listen to a recording of her introducing and reading that poem of hers.

Maxine Kumin (1925-2014)
Poet and author