Abstract
Literature provides a window into what Randall and McKim's Reading Our Lives describes as the “inside of aging,” what is going on in the cognitive and emotional lives of the elderly. The late life poetry of Maxine Kumin, age 84, and Linda Pastan, age 77, offers just such an account of this inside story. Using analysis of these poems and insights from gerontology and literary scholarship, this study explores how Kumin and Pastan's late-life poems reinterpret past relationships and experiences, express fear of death, and find affirmation in links to future generations and the larger world.
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