• Nancy K. Miller
  • [Diary of a Memoirist]: Feminist Friends Forever: Met and Unmet.
[Diary of a Memoirist]: Feminist Friends Forever: Met and Unmet.
Contributor
Written by
Nancy K. Miller
February 2014
Contributor
Written by
Nancy K. Miller
February 2014

Maxine Kumin died last week at age 88. In her typically thoughtful obituary, Margalit Fox highlights Kumin’s long life as a poet, teacher, mother, and friend.

Although I never met Kumin, I did correspond with her briefly when I edited an interview she had done with Diane Middlebrook about Anne Sexton in the early 1980s. Diane―who had been a friend of mine, though not at the time―was researching her biography of Sexton, and spent several hours with Kumin, discussing her relationship with Sexton. It was a famous friendship between two famous poets who met early in their careers.

In the late 1950s Ms. Kumin enrolled in a local poetry-writing workshop, where Ms. Sexton was also a student. They became such close friends, and such close readers of each other’s work, that each installed a dedicated phone line in her house on which to call the other. When writing, they left the receivers off the hook; the moment one finished a poem she would whistle into the open line, and the other would come running to hear it, a system that proved a supremely effective forerunner of instant messaging.

Anne Sexton and Maxine Kumin at a meeting of the John Holmes workshop.

Sexton’s suicide in 1974 was shattering for Kumin, but she went on writing poetry, as well as essays, novels, short stories, children’s books, and a memoir.

Diane envied the friendship, and so did my friend Carolyn Heilbrun. Carolyn had admired Kumin for years and would have liked to write a book about her. Kumin demurred. Carolyn described her admiration for Kumin in “Unmet Friends,” an autobiographical meditation from The Last Gift of Time (1997).

For me Kumin has been a woman, vital to my sixties, whom I know in a way no biographer or friend can know her: she is her poems and essays, and what I choose to make of them. At its simplest level, she is what I might have wished to become but never could; her life seems to me a very heaven, intermingling animals and poetry.

During my brief email correspondence with Kumin, I learned that she and Carolyn had dinner together at some point in the Village. Carolyn, moreover, blurbed Kumin’s 2000 memoir, Inside the Halo and Beyond: “Here is a singular story of survival, an earthly miracle wrought by family devotion, gardens, horses and guts. A compelling read.” I was astonished to learn that Carolyn had finally met her unmet friend.

What we don’t know about our friends!

I (stupidly) did not save our emails, so I cannot recall exactly what Kumin told me about their encounter. Kumin did say, however, that she had been intimidated by Carolyn’s erudition. Since Carolyn had committed suicide not long after that meeting, I asked Kumin whether Carolyn seemed depressed. She said yes.

Toward the end of the obituary, Fox observes that Kumin’s work asks how, how “can one weather the losses life’s course makes inevitable?” For Kumin the answer “lay in the promise of continuity from generation to generation.” And in closing Fox quotes from a poem inspired by one of Kumin’s grandchildren.

So here is where Carolyn’s beliefs diverged dramatically from Kumin’s: Carolyn’s grandchildren, it would seem, did not help her deal with the kinds of losses she had to have felt when she decided to leave the world. Her fantasized identification with the poet ended there.

Are biological generations our only buffer against loss? Without children and grandchildren, I have come to think, or at least hope, that friends themselves―especially our younger friends―also offer that promise of continuity and solace. The value of friendship between women is one of feminism’s most precious gifts, even if in the heat of debate we sometimes forget just how precious it is.

Let's be friends

The Women Behind She Writes

519 articles
12 articles

Featured Members (7)

123 articles
392 articles
54 articles
60 articles

Featured Groups (7)

Trending Articles

Comments
  • Kamy Wicoff Brainstorming

    One more thing -- I keep thinking of things -- have you read the new Anne Patchett essay collection? There is an essay about writing, "The Getaway Car", which is one of the best I've read, and in it she talks about her friendship with Elizabeth McCracken. It's great.

  • Kamy Wicoff Brainstorming

    Also I was asked to review a book awhile back that might be worth looking at, Nina -- The Friend Who Got Away, edited by Elissa Schappell and Jenny Offill.  Maybe some one in there would be worth querying for a blurb...? Francine Prose wrote the introduction.

  • Kamy Wicoff Brainstorming

    As one of your younger friends, I can tell you that you are one of my most precious gifts. This moved me so much. And I want you to write that book.

  • Nancy K. Miller

    Yes, I did read the book. It got raves, and I feared I was being scooped. I don't know--the book did not work for me.

    I'd have to go back to it to figure out why--maybe I was just envious because she has a famous name and got treated so well in the press!

    All this is a bit water under the bridge since I do not think I can figure out this book project, even though I've thought a lot about it. 

    Good luck with your blurbs!

  • Nina Gaby

    Have you read SHE MATTERS by Susannah Sonnenberg? I'm reading it now and would get my proverbial eye teeth to get a blurb from her...but she's not answered my inquiries. I don't matter (could not resist that). The book is terrific.

  • Nancy K. Miller

    Yes, I know the book: it's called: "I Know What You Mean"--

    AND I learned about it when I was giving a lecture on the friendship material I have.

    Someone in the audience told me about it….

    AND they also reference the Kumin/Sexton phone line--definitely, it's a classic!!

  • Elizabeth G. Marro

    I have loved this conversation and learning more about the projects Nina and Gaby are working on. Thank you, Nancy, for raising the whole question about relationships between/among women and their importance. I think you have a lot to explore here, Nancy, if you decide to write that book. I'm blocking on the title but Ellen Goodman and her best friend, also a writer, explored their relationship in a book and in the process interviewed other friends about their connections. You might find it interesting. It's not a new book. 

  • Nancy K. Miller

    Thank you for all these comments. I would love to see DUMPED because it's true that the flip side of our sustaining friendships are those that for many reasons fall apart--and always painfully.

    It's also true that it's tempting to become isolated when struggles seem too intense--ours or theirs...

    It's odd that the subject of women's friendship--it was going to be my next book, but now I'm not sure--

    is quite under examined--considering its importance.

  • Kaye Linden

    My tale collection "Tales from Ma's Watering Hole" is about connection through companionship and community.  I have moved so many times in my life that I have pulled up roots over and over again.  The theme of the book is based on the aborigines in Australia and their stolen lands.  They are refugees in the city and desperately cling to each other for comfort.  This is what many of us do.  Getting involved in community or supporting friends is the main way to stay connected.  We used to live in tribes and the support structure was inbuilt.  Not any more. Kaye Linden    

    “Tales from Ma’s Watering Hole”

    http://booklocker.com/books/6953.html

     

     

  • Nina Gaby

    I am in the process of editing an anthology, DUMPED: women unfriending women, which I will be publishing with SHE WRITES in spring 2015. The idea of connection is always on my mind, the grief of lost connection the catalyst to my ever beginning the project, and in a paradoxical way, I am thankful for the losses. This blog entry felt very close to home as I thought about how sad I felt to hear of Kumin's passing, much as when I heard of Grace Paleys death as I was ironically driving through her town as I was listening to NPR. I never knew them, but felt the loss acutely. The passing of icons brings us closer to our own mortality and intensifies the need for us to work harder, quicker, get our own stuff done.

  • Kaye Linden

    I love what Elizabeth Marro. said.  thank you.  Being aware of our tendency to introversion is a huge step in guarding against complete isolation.  kaye

  • Maria Powers

    Love this Elizabeth G. Marro, "there is a passing of the baton." Reminds me of Fried Green Tomatoes and Izzy.

  • Elizabeth G. Marro

    Nancy, one of the things my older friends (85, 90) show me is that as I age, there is a passing of the baton. Fewer stand between us and the great hereafter but we then become the connection for others, the solace, the continuity, the holder of the keys and that in itself provides a measure of comfort if we can find it. That said, I struggle often with my own tendency towards introversion and alone-ness half out of fear that if I give into this part of my nature in the face of loss, I will be alone. 

  • Sandra Tarling

    I strongly believe that our best friends, as well as family, are needed to help us with life's losses. After losing a dear, close friend recently who had no close family, I have become an even firmer believer in how much we need our friends. Throughout the months leading to my friend's passing, friends that lived nearby were there for her daily. My husband and I, and others who lived farther from her, made periodic visits and called often. A net of support very quickly took hold. And now that she's gone, we support one another in our shared loss.

     

  • Kaye Linden

    Close friends stay close because of and in spite of one's losses and history.  It is the passage through these times that offers the support.  I have to say that to expect support, one must offer it.  Don't expect a good friend if you are not one.  Children can stay self-absorbed and there are no guarantees.  I have wonderful friends who I gain support from over the telephone and when we can, in person.  They are my shrinks, therapists and soul sisters. kaye

  • Maria Powers

    I think of myself as currently in the middle with older, same age and younger friends. In many cases, I am actually not sure of the age of some of my friends. I have friends in their 90s and friends in their 20s and some of the friends in their 20s started out as children that I helped to raise but now they are friends which makes my same aged, 50s, friends uncomfortable because I don't treat their daughters or sons as "children" and they still do. How do we continue to create friendships across the generational lines upward as we get older and the upward becomes a smaller and smaller pool? I am not sure. It requires involvement in groups and reaching out to those who are older and including them whenever possible. There could also be a natural ebb and flow to friendships and how we create them. Perhaps it is currently just an ebb tide for you.

  • Nancy K. Miller

    What you both say about older friends is true. But sadly, as one gets older (not to say OLD), one--at least, I--have fewer and fewer friends older than I am. 

  • Elizabeth G. Marro

    I believe that friends as much if not more than family offer the promos of continuity and solace in the face of loss but also in the day-to-day living of this life. I have younger and older women friends. The younger ones keep me plugged in to the parts of life and of myself that I would lose touch with. The older ones teach me courage and grace. I agree that women friends are precious. 

  • Maria Powers

    Interesting hypothesis about friends and what keeps us moving forward in the face of great loss. I believe that yes, it is our friends across the generations both up and down. Clearly, as we age the generational crossing has to be more towards those younger than ourselves, but it is our friendships with those older than ourselves that teach us how to move forward through colossal losses with grace and dignity. We then show our younger friends these same lessons. Additionally, it helps to have family that has also done this because then we know in a core part of ourselves that loss can be weathered. We honor those whom we have lost by living well and fully.