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. ,
Madeleine May Kunin, the first woman to be elected governor of Vermont (three-terms), was also U.S. Ambassador to Switzerland and U.S. deputy secretary of education. She as written four previous books: Living a Political Life (Knopf), and The New Feminist Agenda: Defining the Next Revolution for Women, Work, and Family (New York Times Editor's Choice), Pearls Politics and Power, and Coming of Age: My Journey to the Eighties (GWP). Her first poetry collection, Red Kite, Blue Sky, was published in 2021 by Green Writers Press. She is currently James Marsh Professor-at-Large at the University of Vermont, where she gives guest lectures on feminism and women and politics. She also served on the board of the Institute for Sustainable Communities (ISC), a nongovernmental organization that she founded in 1991, and she launched Emerge Vermont to encourage and support women in politics. She lives in Shelburne, Vermont.
"The release of former three-term Vermont Governor Madeleine May Kunin’s second collection of poetry,
Walk With Me, is nothing short of an invitation the reader has no choice but to accept. Stepping into the pages, we are caught by the meanderings of the lines, the ebbs and flows of the images, and the inclines and gentle rolling undulations of the stanzas. In the scope of her book, Kunin is not simply taking us on a journey of language, but holds our hand as we crawl into a soft, cushioned space of the poet’s authenticity and vulnerability. For 126 pages, we see the world from the end of a line cast far out on the horizon. From this place we are invited to gaze back in bittersweet remembrance and appreciation of a life filled to the brim with intention, warmth, confusion, loss, heartbreak, and growth."—
Addison Independent
