NOTEWORTHY DEATHS

A U.S. poet laureate and Pulitzer winner

WARNER, N.H. - Maxine Kumin, a prolific New England poet and U.S. poet laureate who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973 for her work Up Country, has died. She was 88.

Kumin, who wrote more than three dozen books of poetry, fiction, nonfiction and children’s literature, died Thursday at her home in Warner after a year of failing health, said the Bennett Funeral Home in Concord.

Kumin was an advocate for women writers, social justice and animal welfare. Her final work, And Short the Season, is to be released later this year.

Born in Philadelphia, she graduated from Radcliffe College and lived for a while in Newton, Mass.

Kumin’s family members said her work was marked by a love and deep observation of nature and an unwavering commitment to the craft of writing. They said a celebration of her life and work will be held in the spring.

Kumin’s work has been recognized with numerous other awards, including the Ruth Lilly Prize, the Harvard Medal, the Levinson Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Poetry Award.

Kumin also was a prominent teacher of writing, occupying graduate or undergraduate visiting chairs or fellowships at Boston University, Brandeis, Columbia, MIT, Princeton and other institutions. At New England College in Henniker, N.H., she helped establish a new poetry master of fine arts program.

Kumin’s work and life were linked to those of poet Anne Sexton, a close friend and collaborator who committed suicide in 1974.

Political expert, author of Who Governs?

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW YORK - Robert A. Dahl, an esteemed and influential political scientist who in such books as Who Governs? championed democracy in theory and critiqued it in practice, has died. He was 98.

A professor emeritus at Yale University, Dahl died Wednesday at a nursing home in Hamden, Conn., according to his daughter Sara Connor.

His career lasted for more than half a century, but he was best known for the 1961 publication Who Governs? Cited by the Times Literary Supplement as among the 100 most influential books since World War II, Who Governs? probed the political system of Dahl’s own community at the time, New Haven, which he considered an ideal microcosm for the country: two strong parties, a long history and a careful progression from patrician rule to self made men to party rule, where candidates of varied ethnic and economic backgrounds - a garage owner, an undertaker, a director of publicity - might succeed.

Dahl believed no single entity was in charge. Instead, there were competing ones - social, economic and political leaders whose goals often did not overlap. He acknowledged that many citizens did not participate in local issues and that the rich had advantages over the poor, but concluded that New Haven, while a “republic of unequal citizens,” was still a republic.

Dahl’s conclusions were strongly challenged in the 1970s by sociologist G. William Domhoff, who used research provided in part by Dahl himself to find that he had underestimated the power of the business community and overestimated the divisions among New Haven’s leaders. Domhoff alleged that Dahl relied too much on the people he spoke with.