Woodchucks

Maxine Kumin

1972

Gassing the woodchucks didn’t turn out right.
The knockout bomb from the Feed and Grain Exchange
was featured as merciful, quick at the bone
and the case we had against them was airtight,
both exits shoehorned shut with puddingstone,
but they had a sub-sub-basement out of range.
Next morning they turned up again, no worse
for the cyanide than we…
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Creator Bio

Maxine Kumin

1925–2014
Brought up in Philadelphia, Maxine Kumin was a poet, novelist, and essayist. She served as consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress from 1981 to 1982 (before the establishment of the position of U.S. poet laureate) and as poet laureate of New Hampshire from 1989 until 1994. She received numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, and the Aiken Taylor Prize.

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