Inside the Halo and Beyond: The Anatomy of a Recovery [Hardcover]

Maxine Kumin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 2000

From a celebrated poet and horsewoman, the journal of her astonishing recovery after a nearly fatal accident. In July 1998, Maxine Kumin suffered a terrible accident when her horse bolted at a carriage-driving clinic. Ninety-five percent of such victims die before reaching the emergency room. Of those who do survive, ninety-five percent are paralyzed for life. But Kumin, less than a year later, was pronounced "a miracle." This is the journal of her astonishing recovery. Though at first words threatened to elude her, writing (at first by dictating) became a way of maintaining her sanity. Kumin tells of her time "inside the halo," the near-medieval device that kept her head immobile during the weeks of intensive care and rehabilitation. During the long evenings she gets hooked on the Red Sox, muses on the state of the world, and forms lasting "rehab" friendships. She salutes the loving family who always believed she would heal and who "kept the garden going as a way of keeping me going." Maxine Kumin is the kind of person about whom it is said "they don't make them like that any more." She swerves from despair to hope to unshakable determination as this harrowing yet heartwarming story of a fighter and survivor unfolds.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A skilled horsewoman and lifelong athlete, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Kumin (Quit Monks or Die!) was 73 in July 1998 when a riding accident left her with two broken vertebrae in her neck. Although 95% of such injuries are fatal, Kumin survivedAonly to face overwhelming odds that she would be paralyzed for the rest of her life. Miraculously, however, she was walking again within weeks of the accident; now, though one hand and an arm remain partially immobilized, her life has largely resumed its normal course. Here is the journal of her first nine months of recovery: a slow process in which she regains sensation in a toe or heel, struggles to put one foot in front of the other and is liberated from her catheter. Largely a story of pain and frustration, and of milestones that impressed her medical team but seemed to signal inordinately slow progress to Kumin herself, the volume also serves as a paean to the supportive family members, friends and fellow patients who helped her through the ordeal. The "halo" of the book's title was a very real immobilizing metal cage in which her head was enclosed for nearly three months. A profoundly uncomfortable device that induced claustrophobia and made sleeping impossible without the aid of narcotics, the halo saved Kumin's life by allowing her broken neck to heal; she makes it a symbol of both the positive and negative aspects of the recovery process. Candid about the many tribulations that accompany recovery from a serious injury, Kumin also meditates on how one can take a life that's interrupted with brutal abruptness and put it back together again. As such, this account offers both honesty and hope to others who face such traumatic experiences. (June)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

Inside the Halo and Beyond serves as a silhouette against the horizon, resonating wisdom while announcing a triumph of body and soul. -- The New York Times Book Review, Anne Roiphe

Kumin's description of her terrifying accident and recovery is so much more than an illness narrative. Inside the Halo and Beyond reminds us of our vulnerability, shows us the astonishing resilience of the human spirit, and ultimately the healing and transformative power of words. From a singular experience she has created a lesson that is universal, which, it seems to me, is the essence of being a poet. -- Abraham Verghese, the author of The Tennis Partner and My Own Country

Maxine Kumin brings the sensitivity and imagination of a poet to her extraordinary ordeal. It is triumph over adversity that "bursts the petty bonds of art" as Walt Whitman remarked upon tending the wounded in the Civil War. -- Richard Selzer, author of Mortal Lessons : Notes on the Art of Surgery

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1st edition (May 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393049000
• ISBN-13: 978-0393049008
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,512,169 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wise, upbeat, gorgeously written and utterly inspirational, July 16, 2000

By 

Fifth Generation Texan (Winters, CA USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Inside the Halo and Beyond: The Anatomy of a Recovery (Hardcover)

Pulitzer prize winning poet-naturalist Maxine Kumin chronicles a period of nine months, from the horrible horse-and-carriage accident that left her with a 5% chance of survival, and an even tinier prospect of ever walking again, to the time she is once again able to scramble up steep hills on her farm in New Hampshire again, albeit with difficulty. Hers is a statistically improbable recovery brought about not just by discipline and determination, and certainly not by faith (she is an atheist), but by love -- her family's love of her, and her own love not just for husband, children and grandchildren, but for horses, dogs, birds, vegetable garden, the seasons, and above all art and her craft. A passionate biophiliac, Kumin's love of nature can not be separated from her love of others, or her will to survive. This is an inpsirational book at so many levels. I completed it within hours of getting my hands on it, with my husband (a medical doctor) urging me to keep going, because I was reading it out loud to him and to my thirteen year old son. Inside the Halo... is wise, upbeat, gorgeously written and utterly inspirational. Someone you know scheduled for an operation? Had an accident? Run into some discouraging news? Forget the card. Send this book.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars WHAT NOURISHES, July 18, 2000

By 

Kelly Sievers - See all my reviews

This review is from: Inside the Halo and Beyond: The Anatomy of a Recovery (Hardcover)

Maxine Kumin has given us a gift. "Illness, disability, the specter of permanent damage... are deeply personal, immediate, and terrifying," she writes. Indeed. This chronicle of recovery from a cervical spinal injury sustained after her horse bolted is a courageous foray through the intense first ten months of recovery.

More than a story of pluck and resilience this book delivers joy in its reaffirmation of what nourishes us: loving relationships. Relationships with husband, son, daughters, and friends--both old and newly formed in recovery-- and relationships to the land, to its bounty. It seems impossible for someone so connected to life to ever give up on it easily. Kumin narrates, in journal form, her struggles and how she didn't quit.

Kumin's life unfolds in this book. We see the stoic formed when her adored father "hovered in the doorway" when she was ill as a child; the horse lover who takes "deep pleasure" in seeing her horses in action; the gardener describing cauliflower and broccoli lovingly planted in May from seeds started on living room windowsills; and the poet who says of her farmhouse, "All of my doors are held open by stones."

The mother and wife are here, too. Kumin's daughter, Judith, spends months with her mother. It is comforting to read of a supportive, caring, daughter/mother relationship that flourishes during a time of great stress. Kumin is not afraid to tell us about moments of guilt and despair: "How I feel about my accident is quite simply that I screwed up everybody's life by living through it."

All this is written within a flowing narrative style that is groomed by this writer's cumulative knowledge of what is important in language and life.

Maxine Kumin is one of my favorite poets. I cheered when this well-paced chronicle lead to a spring when this writer was finally back in the "peaceful kingdom" of her farm in New Hampshire. I am grateful the author has offered a book that allows us to witness her struggle as she looked inward and reached out.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Inside the Halo and Beyond, August 18, 2000

By 

Robert Dorroh (Sonora, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Inside the Halo and Beyond: The Anatomy of a Recovery (Hardcover)

Putting thoughts into words is the salvation of many, particularly Maxine Kumin, who describes her recovery from paralysis in "Inside the Halo and Beyond." I was recently paralyzed myself, so I keenly identified with the account of her rehabilitation. Yet I felt pangs of jealousy because she walks again and the chances are nil this will happen to me.

Still, this book deserves an all-star rating for Kumin's eloquent and starkly honest description of her connections to poetry, literature, current events, international suffering, nature, equestrian riches, gardening, familial and friendly relations. She evokes empapthy and compassion without resorting to sappy sentiment or references to God. She explains, "My agnosticism eroded eventually to the skeletal remains of atheism and there I still stand. I'm not sure whether I should envy or pity the faith of others. Yes, it would be nice to have, but it seems a luxury of pietism I cannot afford."

Her love of words is eloquent: "I've always been a galloping reader, racing for information, hurtling past intervening advertisements or cartoons, breathless and fascinated with language."

It's a fine book.