Why Sochi’s “above and beyond” what we’ve seen before: ‘Dave Zirin, author of “Bad Sports,” tells Salon about graft, LGBT activism, Putin and why athletes will defy him…’ (Salon.com).

 

Pulitzer-Winning Poet With a Naturalist’s Precision Dies at 88: ‘Maxine Kumin, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet whose spare, deceptively simple lines explored some of the most complex aspects of human existence — birth and death, evanescence and renewal, and the events large and small conjoining them all — died on Thursday at her home in Warner, N.H. She was 88.Her death was announced by her daughter Judith Kumin, who said that her mother had been in declining health for the last year and a half.The author of essays, novels, short stories and children’s books as well as poetry, Ms. Kumin pronounced KYOO-min, like the spice was praised by critics for her keen ear for the aural character of verse — the clash and cadence of meter, the ebb and flow of rhyme — and her naturalist’s eye for minute observation.’ (NYTimes obituary)