Maxine Cassin

Maxine Cassin (1927–2010) was a poet, editor, and publisher who influenced and published many New Orleans poets, most notably Everette Maddox, founder of the Maple Leaf Bar poetry reading series. In the 1950s, Cassin and Richard Ashman edited the New Orleans Poetry Journal. Contributors included William Stafford, Donald Hall, Judson Jerome, Sylvia Plath, and Vassar Miller. The journals' press published Miller's Adam's Footprint (1956) and Struggling to Swim on Concrete (1984), as well as collections by Maddox, Raeburn Miller, Martha McFerren, Tom Wright, Harold Witt, Felix Stefanile, Rosewell Graves Lowrey, Charles L. Black, Ralph Adamo, Charles DeGravelles (a later co-editor of the press), and Paul Petrie. She also published Malaika Favorite's poetry and art, as well as Clarence John Laughlin's photographs. Cassin, along with Maddox and Yorke Corbin, also edited the first Maple Leaf Rag anthology.
Cassin was born in New Orleans in 1927 of Armenian and Jewish descent. She attended the all-women's Newcomb College (now part of Tulane University), earning an M.A. in philosophy. In 1954, she married Joe Cassin, a survivor of the Bataan Death March during World War II; they have one son.
In 2005, Hurricane Katrina forced the Cassins to relocate from their home in Uptown New Orleans to Baton Rouge. Despite failing health and artistic isolation, Cassin communicated with other poets, artists, and friends through the World Wide Web, usually through messages typed in all-capital letters. She continued to publish in major journals as late as 2006; Callaloo's post-Katrina issue featured "Three Love Poems by a Native," which Cassin also read during an October 26, 1995 interview with WWNO-FM's Fred Kasten.
Maxine Cassin died in Baton Rouge within days of Joe's death in March, 2010.