Maxine Kumin, 88, former poet laureate

Maxine Kumin, 88, a Philadelphia native who won literary fame writing poetry in New England, died Thursday at her farm in Warner, N.H.

Ms. Kumin had been in failing health for a year, according to the Bennett Funeral Home in Concord, N.H.

She won a Pulitzer Prize in 1973 for her collection of poems, Up Country, and served as poet laureate of the United States (a post then called poetry consultant to the Library of Congress) in 1981-82. She was poet laureate of New Hampshire from 1989 to 1994, and was the author of more than three dozen books of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and children's literature. Her final work, the poetry collection And Short the Season, is scheduled to be released in April.

Ms. Kumin was known as an advocate for women writers, social justice, and animal rights.

Born Maxine Winokur on June 6, 1925 in the Germantown section of Philadelphia, she was the youngest of the four children of Peter and Doll Winokur. Ms. Kumin described her father in a 1983 Inquirer interview as "the biggest pawnbroker in the city of Philadelphia." Until age 17, she lived on Carpenter Lane, but attended Cheltenham High School. "I was a very, I think, lonely kid, very introspective," she told interviewer Maralyn Lois Polak. "I felt very much at odds with my environment and my culture. . . . Probably a genetic flaw. I can't really explain it."

She decided early on that she wanted to be a writer and tried her hand at a novel "at a very tender age. I was 8, and after Chapter 3, I couldn't think of what to do with my characters, and it bothered me. I mean, I really felt like a quitter putting that aside. I felt guilty for years and years and years that I never finished it."

Ms. Kumin graduated from Radcliffe College and lived for a while in Newton, Mass. In 1946, she married Victor Kumin, a Harvard University scientist whom she had met on a blind date in 1944 when he was on leave from serving with the Army at Los Alamos, N.M. She attributed the couple's long marriage (he survives her) to the difference in their careers: "That's my prescription for a happy marriage - marry someone who doesn't do anything similar to what you do." They moved to their hillside farm in New Hampshire in 1973.

Her family said her work was marked by a love and deep observation of nature and an unwavering commitment to the craft of writing.

Ms. Kumin's poetry is hard to classify, according to a brief biography on the Poetry Foundation's website. She has been described as a regional pastoral poet, a transcendentalist poet and a confessional poet, according to the entry. "In many ways, though, Kumin is unlike other poets . . . ," the biography continues. "Kumin is most often compared to Robert Frost."

Ms. Kumin's work has been recognized with numerous other awards, including the Ruth Lilly Prize, the Harvard Medal, the Levinson Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Poetry Award.

Ms. Kumin also was a prominent teacher of writing, occupying graduate or undergraduate visiting chairs or fellowships at Boston University, Brandeis, Columbia, MIT, Princeton and other institutions. At New England College in Henniker, N.H., she helped establish a poetry master of fine arts program.

Ms. Kumin's work and life were linked to those of poet Anne Sexton, a close friend and collaborator who committed suicide in 1974.

Besides her husband, Ms. Kumin is survived by two daughters, a son, and two grandsons.