The Equivalents
Page 40
“Suddenly I was in business”: Kumin, Pawnbroker’s Daughter, 131.
She was profiled in magazines: Helen C. Smith, “Women of Letters: Female Writers Discuss the New Literature,” Atlanta Constitution, 12 June 1976; Charles A. Brady, “Poets and Wine,” Kumin Papers.
“I really dislike”: Yvonne Chabier, “From the Hermit to Amanda: A Conversation with Maxine Kumin,” Kumin Papers.
“Being in the limelight”: Kumin, Pawnbroker’s Daughter, 127.
“as cumbrous as bears”: Maxine Kumin, Up Country: Poems of New England, New and Selected (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), 21.
“church of folded hands”: Ibid., 40.
“burned babies screaming”: Ibid., 80.
“When people hear”: Maria Karagianis, “Maxine Kumin: A Poet Awakens,” Boston Globe, 19 Aug. 1974, 10.
“the shoots”: Kumin, “Beans,” in Up Country, 26.
“all consented to die unseen”: Kumin, “Woodchucks,” in Up Country, 29.
“indecent bird”: Kumin, “Whippoorwill,” in Up Country, 39.
“is a concentrate”: Herbert A. Kenny, “A Gifted Poet in Top Form,” Boston Globe, Kumin Papers.
“sharp-edged, unflinching”: Joyce Carol Oates, “One for Life, One for Death,” New York Times, 19 Nov. 1972, BR7.
“how good it feels”: Kumin to Oates, 19 Nov. 1972, Kumin Papers.
The Kumins had also accrued: Karagianis, “Maxine Kumin.”
“polished silver candlesticks”: Kumin, Pawnbroker’s Daughter, 126.
“which tools”: Sexton, “Wanting to Die,” in Complete Poems, 142.
She visited Kumin’s farm: Linda Gray Sexton, interview by author.
“Anne was really”: Quoted in Middlebrook, Anne Sexton, 185.
“It was a terrible responsibility”: Middlebrook, “Remembering Anne Sexton.”
“all good’: Kumin, “September 1,” 1963, Kumin Papers.
CHAPTER 19: Which Way Is Home
“I tremble to think”: Tovish to Pineda, 5 Jan. 1997, Pineda Papers.
“You won’t get another chance”: Quoted in Middlebrook, Anne Sexton, 392; Middlebrook, “Remembering Anne Sexton,” 298.
“the SPIRIT”: Swan to Sexton, July 1973, Sexton Papers.
“I have been through”: Kumin to Phil Legler, 18 Oct. 1973, Kumin Papers.
Linda Gray Sexton’s memoir contains: Linda Gray Sexton, Searching for Mercy Street, 44-45.
“We get along”: Sexton to Kumin, 26 May 1964, Kumin Papers.
In the year 1975: Alexander A. Plateris, “Divorce and Divorce Rates, United States,” United States, National Center for Health Statistics, April 1980, www.cdc.gov.
Sexton was sleeping until ten: Middlebrook, “Remembering Anne Sexton,” 297.
“It is a Christly time”: Sexton to Rich, 19 Sept. 1973, Sexton Papers.
“As the situation grew”: Linda Gray Sexton, Searching for Mercy Street, 178.
In July: Ibid., 180–81.
“I had a little fame”: Middlebrook, “Remembering Anne Sexton,” 298.
“dichotomy between the city life”: Ibid., 296.
“She made me see”: Ibid., 294.
“I’ve come all this way”: Sexton to Kumin, 22 Aug. 1969, Kumin Papers.
“I was going to lose her”: Quoted in Middlebrook, Anne Sexton, 368.
“You are, Anne”: Showalter and Smith, “Nurturing Relationship,” 134.
“I’ve been having an upsetting time”: Ibid., 126.
“Subject: Selfish; needy”: Sexton to Kumin, 25 April 1974, Kumin Papers.
“original”: Middlebrook, “Remembering Anne Sexton,” 293.
“Annie gave as good”: Ibid., 296.
“how upsetting my presence”: Sexton to Kumin, 25 April 1974, Kumin Papers.
“the quality of life”: Kumin to Irving Weinman, 13 Jan. 1975, Kumin Papers.
“antiseptic tunnel[s]”: Anne Sexton, “You, Doctor Martin,” in Complete Poems, 3.
“world…full of enemies”: Anne Sexton, “Noon Walk on the Asylum Lawn,” in Complete Poems, 28.
“Don’t worry”: Kumin to Bruce [possibly Bruce Berlind], 16 Oct. 1974, Kumin Papers.
“healed”: Kumin to Barbara Swan, 20 Nov. 1974, Kumin Papers.
Wrapped in the coat: Details from Middlebrook, Anne Sexton, 396–97; and Kay Bartlett, “Death of a Poet,” Associated Press, in Kumin Papers.
“The tendency to confuse”: McClatchy, Anne Sexton, 74.
“For a book or two”: Lowell in ibid., 71.
“necrophiliac cult”: Kumin to Irving Weinman, 13 Jan. 1975, Kumin Papers.
“I carried Anne’s death”: Kumin to Barbara Swan, 20 Nov. 1974, Kumin Papers.
“a more active sworn enemy”: Olsen to Kumin, n.d., Kumin Papers.
“no more reproachful little notes”: Kumin to Annie Wilder, 16 Jan. 1975, Kumin Papers.
“alone who bleed[s]”: Kumin to Olsen, 15 Aug. 1978, Kumin Papers.
“A line out of Sexton”: Middlebrook, “Remembering Anne Sexton,” 296.
The statue was: Linda Gray Sexton, interview by author, 2 Feb. 2019.
“Before there was a Woman’s Movement”: Kumin, “How It Was,” xxxiii.
“We left the comforts”: Kumin, Pawnbroker’s Daughter, 133.
“I stopped you a dozen times”: “The Lifetime Friend,” 1973, Kumin Papers.
“the instant criticism”: Middlebrook, “Remembering Anne Sexton,” 293.
“It would be blinking”: Kumin to Lois Ames, 2 Sept. 1976, Kumin Papers.
“We have had enough”: Adrienne Rich, On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose, 1966–1978 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1995), 121.
Rich once asked Sexton: Sexton to Rich, 28 June 1967, Sexton Papers.
“She wrote poems alluding to”: Rich, On Lies, Secrets, and Silence, 121.
“Self-trivialization is one”: Ibid., 122.
“tells us what we have”: Ibid., 123.
“came not out of”: Kumin to Irving Weinman, 13 Jan. 1975, Kumin Papers.
“Every woman who writes”: Quoted in Rich, On Lies, Secrets, and Silence, 123.
“A thinking woman”: Adrienne Rich, “Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law,” in Collected Poems, 1950–2012 (New York: W. W. Norton, 2016), 118.
“Women’s Lib rap”: Quoted in Michelle Dean, “The Wreck,” New Republic, 3 April 2016, newrepublic.com.
“felt as though the top”: Margaret Atwood, “Diving into the Wreck,” New York Times, 30 Dec. 1973, www.nytimes.com.
She insisted that Alice Walker: “Adrienne Rich,” Poetry Foundation, 2012, www.poetryfoundation.org.
“I believe profoundly”: Rich to Olsen, 5 Feb. 1977, Olsen Papers.
“non-merger merger”: Robin Freedberg, “Merger Yielded to Non-merger Merger,” Harvard Crimson, 17 Sept. 1973.
“quite wonderful”: Quoted in Yaffe, Mary Ingraham Bunting, Kindle ed.
“institution of motherhood”: Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (London: Virago, 1979), 32.
“How lucid and exact”: Kumin to Rich, 20 Oct. 1976, Kumin Papers.
“I just wanted to say”: Dean, “The Wreak.”
Epilogue
“a greater acceptance”: Adam A. Sofen, “Radcliffe Enters Historic Merger with Harvard,” Harvard Crimson, 21 April 1999.
But once the merger: Pamela Ferdin, “Radcliffe to Merge with Harvard, to Become a Center for Advanced Study,” Washington Post, 21 April 1999.
Radcliffe transferred all: Katherine S. Mangan, “Radcliffe College Will Merge into Harvard,” Chronicle of Higher Education, 30 April 1999.
“It would be a completely different env
ironment”: Ibid.
“creative work”: “About Us,” Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, www.radcliffe.harvard.edu.
“I cannot say”: Lily Macrakis, interview by author.
“We spoke to their condition”: Yaffe, Mary Ingraham Bunting, Kindle ed.
ILLUSTRATION CREDITS
1Ted Polumbaum/Newseum collection
2Courtesy of Kumin family
3Courtesy of the Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries
4Charles Hagen
5Roy Stevens
6Courtesy of Danforth Art Museum
7Courtesy of Joanna Fink
8Vytas Valaitis for Newsweek
9Ian Cook for LIFE
10Originally published in the Radcliffe Institute’s Report of the Director, 1963; Courtesy of Schlesinger Library
11Courtesy of the author
12Underwood Archives via Getty Images
13Georgia Litwack
14Published by Houghton Mifflin in 1966; Jacket art by Barbara Swan
15Freda Leinwand
16Courtesy of the Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries
17Bernard Gotfryd via Getty Images
18Courtesy of Joanna Fink
19Nancy Crampton
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Maggie Doherty teaches writing at Harvard, where she earned a PhD in English. Her writing has appeared in many publications, including The New Republic, The New York Times, n+1, and The Nation. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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