Poetry and Animals

74POEMS OF THE ANIMAL

pea plants, the growth of a field, the behavior of a family of crows on
the edge of the field, and the movement of women over the field.

The rhythm is

diffusion and concentration:

in and out:

expansion and

contraction: the unfolding,

furling:^37

Both poems document a full-fledged human experience, based on care-
ful observation of the natural world and the opening of consciousness
to the ebbs and flows of other forms of being (neatly echoed in the halt-
ing enjambments and line indentations). The muted epiphanies of these
poems are about a recognition of this sameness, that our own identi-
ties are ultimately the products of the same forces that create, and are
formed by, other animals.
Many of the autobiographical poems by Maxine Kumin also show
how contact with animals allows them to become an intimate part of
her sense of self. The poem “Feeding Time” simply describes the pro-
cess of feeding the creatures she shares her farm and farmland with: the
horses, the dog, the cat who follows her on her chores, the birds, and
“now us.”^38 At the end of the daily ritual of dinner, the speaker wonders
about her children, who used to be a part of this family that the mother-
speaker nourishes. The poem evokes as directly as possible a sense of
the fellowship of animals and people, though all the animals she feeds
are both a part of the family and a part of the physical world whose
cycles remain the same. Her poems “A Mortal Day of No Surprises” and
“Notes on a Blizzard” (among many others) show the speaker marking
time in winter by taking careful note of the animals in the landscape
around her. The animals connect the speaker to the bit of pastoral land
she inhabits, though “when I’m scooped out of here / all things animal
/ and unsurprised will carry on.”^39 On the other hand, in the poem “The
Retrieval System” the speaker admits that the eyes of her companion