Search results for ""Author Madeleine May Kunin""

In Madeleine Kunin’s second poetry collection, Walk With Me, the well-versed poet and three-term Vermont governor invites the audience to step into her world, to slow down and find new serenity in older age and unexpected love. Kunin explores the nuances of everyday moments that cultivate a bittersweet appreciation for simple joys. Walk With Me is a beautifully crafted illustration of not only what it means to be a woman on the eve of ninety years of life, but a feminist, a politician, an immigrant, a mother, a lover, a companion, and a living thing in the midst of an ever-turbulent world. The relationship with the self is a lifelong evolution, a journey that Kunin refuses to tire. Instead, her poems illuminate the confidence and insecurities inherent to all humans, even in older age. The images woven throughout this collection are tender and warm, giving the reader an outlet to appreciate what it means to be alive through each stanza, over and over again.

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Red Kite, Blue Sky, the debut poetry collection from Madeleine May Kunin, celebrates life and the natural world, occasioned by the birth of grand-children, the memories of friendship and past birthdays/Bar Mitzvahs, a gift of plum-colored gloves from the poet’s daughter, the Sicilian sun which “melts my argument against myself," with sharp observations and humor. Like Emily Dickinson before her, Kunin does not shy away from death; rather she embraces the anticipation “before death drags me deep,” the gap in her life when her beloved husband dies, the fear of immigration to America during World War II with “an H for Hebrew, I found out later,” and the sadness of being isolated as an older woman living alone during the pandemic. For years Kunin was caught in the tempo of politics—as governor, as a federal official, and as an ambassador—but as she eased into retirement from public life, she found a door that opened for her to explore the multi-layered language of poetry.

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Many readers are already familiar with Madeleine Kunin, the former three-term governor of Vermont, who served as the deputy secretary of education and ambassador to Switzerland under President Bill Clinton. In her newest book, a memoir entitled Coming of Age: My Journey to the Eighties, the topic is aging, but she looks well beyond the physical tolls and explores the emotional ones as well. And she has had an extraordinary life: governor, ambassador, feminist, wife, mother, professor, poet, and much, much more. As recently reported in the New York Times, a girl born today can expect to live to the age of ninety, on average (boys, on the other hand, can expect to live until age eighty-five). Life expectancy, for many, is increasing, yet people rarely contemplate the emotional changes that come alongside the physical changes of aging. Madeleine wants to change that. Coming of Age: My Journey to the Eighties takes a close and incisive look at what it is like to grow old. The book is a memoir, yet most important of all, it is an honest and positive look at aging and how it has affected her life. Cover photo © Todd Lockwood.

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Many readers are already familiar with Madeleine Kunin, the former three-term governor of Vermont, who served as the deputy secretary of education and ambassador to Switzerland under President Bill Clinton. In her newest book, a memoir entitled Coming of Age: My Journey to the Eighties, the topic is aging, but she looks well beyond the physical tolls and explores the emotional ones as well. And she has had an extraordinary life: governor, ambassador, feminist, wife, mother, professor, poet, and much, much more. As recently reported in the New York Times, a girl born today can expect to live to the age of ninety, on average (boys, on the other hand, can expect to live until age eighty-five). Life expectancy, for many, is increasing, yet people rarely contemplate the emotional changes that come alongside the physical changes of aging. Madeleine wants to change that. Coming of Age: My Journey to the Eighties takes a close and incisive look at what it is like to grow old. The book is a memoir, yet most important of all, it is an honest and positive look at aging and how it has affected her life. Cover photo © Todd Lockwood.

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