Up Country

Maxine Kumin (1925-2014) was an American poet best known for her precise evocations of rural New England life, family, nature, and loss, often in traditional forms. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1973 for Up Country: Poems of New England, served as Poet Laureate Consultant to the Library of Congress (1981-1982) and Poet Laureate of New Hampshire (1989-1994), and received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize in 1999 among other honors. Notable works include The Retrieval System (1978), Our Ground Time Here Will Be Brief (1982), and Selected Poems, 1960–1990 (1997).