A poet laureate-to-be

A poet laureate-to-be

Just in time for National Poetry Month, the poet and essayist who writes as A.M. Juster contacted us about the early work of Maxine Kumin. It turns out that the late Ms. Kumin, US poet laureate from 1981 to 1982, published 28 poems and essays in the Monitor in the 1950s, including this one – the first poem she ever published, which appeared April 4, 1953.

Factually Speaking

  There never grows so red the rose,  

So sound the round tomato,  

As March's catalogues disclose,  

And yearly I fall prey to!