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Collected here are the complete love poems of May Swenson -- poems full of kindness, of sensuousness, of gentle affection, of love satisfied. As Maxine Kumin writes in her foreword to this collection, "the majority of Swenson's love poems are human you-and-I poems, exquisitely tender and understated." Culled from Swenson's published poetry as well as from her unpublished manuscripts, the poems in this collection provide an intimate glimpse of one of the most beloved American poets of the twentieth century, "a poet of dazzling gifts" (Joyce Carol Oates). ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Read Them in Historical Context
May doesn't need defending, but here goes. You have to read the poems in historical context to understand how brave she was to write them. She had to overcome not only fear of the public, and of the poetry industry, but of-- in those days-- the psychiatric associations, and all the internalized voices of her distant youth. This was wrong. This was bad. The self censorship was the most stringent censorship of all back then. She may not be Bishop, as a pure lyricist, but she was far braver.

weaker than i expected
I really expected a lot out of this collection, but I found it to be rather weak as a whole. In fact, many of the poems were a stretch as to if I'd even call them love poems. "Because I Don't Know" stands out as both a great poem and a great love poem. But one of the other of the best poems "Strawberrying" is a stretch, I think, to call it a love poem, though there is some sensual imagery in it. I just thought that this collection would be better than what it is. ... Read more

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NATURE, a major compendium of May Swenson's poems, including ten that appeared first in this collection, draws on nearly fifty years of work. "Surely no one, scientist or poet," wrote former U.S. poet laureate Howard Nemerov, "has seen things . . . so clearly as she, and surely no one has made seeing and saying so nearly one." ... Read more

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Great poems for a daughter
I am not a poetry guy; I really like horror fiction by Stephen King and Clive Barker.

However, my 20 year old daughter loved it the first time through and still sometimes pulls it out to reread some of her favorites; sorry I'm a bad father as I don't recall which ones.

A voluptuous vision
May Swenson weaves surprising humor, vivid detail, and startling imagery into her poetry. It's always alive with fresh ways of describing the familiar, and held together by a subtle but strong philosophical thread. She has the knack of writing immediately accessible poetry that's never watered down, never less than rigorous & precise -- yet she never lets the reader see the intricate structure behind the brilliance of the image. There's always the sense of a fiercely intelligent spirit at play in her work.

The poetry gathered here is about Nature ... but we're not talking about a vague, bland, greeting card version of Nature. This is the world both harsh & beautiful, bleak & transcendant, often astonishingly erotic & intimate. Reading her poetry is like drinking a particularly rich & sparkling wine, tinged with rare spices. And in reading, all your senses will be dizzy & dazzled before you know it. Most highly recommended!

May Swenson
My introduction to May Swenson came when I recently met the person to whom all of her work has been bequeathed. I found May Swenson's work to be very accessible, which is not the "vogue" in poetry at the moment. Anyone can understand and be touched. Her childlike humor mixed with her sometimes profound subject matter makes this book a treasure trove of sweet, funny, heart-wrenching, fascinating poems that you'll want to flip in and out of over and over again. It has made me interested in the rest of her work and life. ... Read more

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A collection of poems celebrates the magic and the mystery of the written word and features riddle poems and poems about animals, water, space, and more. ... Read more

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A good introduction to poetry for children
This book is a good tool for introducing poetry to children and sparking their interest.Afterall, all poets were kids once, and something got us interested in the craft.

My 6th graders were not really captivated
I'm not that much of a fan of Swenson's poetry, but I bought this book for my 6th grade writing classes and my rating is largely based upon their reactions to it. Before I ask the kids to write poetry, I try to allow them to read as much as possible. Since many 11-year-olds have little attraction to poetry, this book looked like an interesting addition with it's `puzzler' twist. This did not turn out to be the case. A fair number of students picked out the book, but few stuck with it. After some casual interviews of my students here's what might have been going on:

I think the `puzzler' element intrigued many kids but, ultimately, it just didn't have enough "oomph" for them. They were expecting "brain teasers" of a more logico-mathematical sort. Furthermore, Swenson's mature poetic language seems to have added a second level of challenge for them. Its not that these kids could never get beyond Shel Silverstein (on the contrary, many leapt toward the books with serious themes), but something about Swenson's Marianne-Moore'ish sparseness added complexity while subtracting words. The puzzles weren't puzzling enough and the poetry was a tad too poetic - for 11-year-olds. (For me too!)

It is pretty hard to find powerful poetry appropriate to the range of interests and capabilities of the young-adult. In poetry, as in life, they are sometimes stranded between kiddie-stuff and teen-angst stuff, neither ofwhich define them so much of the time. This collection does offer something with a certain power and poetic universality, so I'd still suggest it for such a classroom (or family) collection as mine... and perhaps yours.

Great for teachers
This book is a great tool to use in order to promote higher order thinking skills in upper elementary and middle school students.It helps children to use their imaginations, and write with more descriptive language. ... Read more

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Between 1950 and 1979, May Swenson and Elizabeth Bishop exchanged over 260 letters.These letters have interested scholars of American poetry for the commentary they contain on important work that each poet was publishing at the time, but equally for what these letters reveal about the relationship between the two writers. In Dear Elizabeth, three letters and five poems from Swenson to Bishop, including an unfinished draft never published before, are gathered into one small volume with an insightful essay by scholar and poet Kirstin Hotelling Zona. ... Read more

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This is a collection of sixty powerful love poems. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

HER POEMS CARESS...
THE BEAUTY OF MAY SWENSON'S POEMS IS THEY NEVER GET OLD.NO MATTER THEAMOUNT OF TIMES YOU READ THEM, THERE WILL ALWAYS BE SOMETHING FRESH AND NEW TO DISCOVER. THE SENSUALITY IN HER WORKS IS SO STRONG, TO READ THEM ISTO FEEL CARESSED BY HER WORDS.DEFINITELY POEMS TO TAKE YOUR TIME READINGBECAUSE HER USE OF WORDS AND IMAGES IS TRULY A PLEASURE TRIP FOR THE MIND.

HER POEMS CARESS...
THE BEAUTY OF MAY SWENSON'S WORK IS THAT IT NEVER GROWS OLD.SENSUALITYIS FOREVER AND SHE CAPTURES MOMENTS BETWEEN LOVERS IN WAYS THAT REACH OUTAND CARESS YOU WHILE YOU READ THEM.HER IMAGES LEAVE YOU WITH A FEELING OFBREATHLESSNESS.

"I'D LET YOU WADE IN ME AND SEIZE ME WITH YOUR EAGERBROWN BEES' POWER A SWEET GLISTENING AT MY CORE."

YOU FIND YOURSELFCOMPLETELY LOST IN THESE MOMENTS AS HER IMAGERY GRIPS YOU AND GUIDES YOUTHROUGH THE LOSS OF TWO SELVES INTO EACH OTHER.

The Erotic Poem, Lives!
May Swenson (l913-1989) was an extrodinary American poet.She won almost every award that could be garnedered for her times. She was friends with Elizabeth Bishop and most of the poeticpowers that be.It is unfortunate that this often antholigized poet, is seldom seen in todays critical writings.

May's poems are the sensuous words of a woman that transcend the lovemaking to the realm of "love" itself.They are unusual in that speak directly to the on looker, and invite not a moral judging but offer the glow of unity and timelessness found in all very well written love poems of any era.The poems all basically celebrate the unity of two souls, but each poem says it uniquely.

In our day when so much is just obvious and sexuality is a tool to uncover the human face of love and not the mystery, we have these wonderful offerings from as honest and truthful a soul, who finds the process of love making eternal and in unity with all life.I highly recommend the book and further feel you will find the afternoon you spend with this extrodinary tome, wonderful, magical and a gift given. ... Read more

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A collection of poems on sports, ranging from solo running, hunting, and fighting, to football and baseball from the spectator's point of view. ... Read more

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Biography of May Swenson
This book was very good I think but it didn't tell everything it could have about her childhood. May Swenson has an interesting life and an interesting poems! ... Read more

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Nice Opening Onto May Swenson, Her Life and Work
For reasons that defy both logic and instinct the poetry of May Swenson continues to fly under the mainstream publishing radar. This compilation of essays on Swenson, published by Utah State University Press, is the first major book we have on the poet, and is obviously only a jumping-off point. A variety of points of view are given and anyone interested in Swenson's poetry will find fascinating windows on her many-sided genius. Of particular note is Swenson'scorrespondence with Bishop, eeirly similar to and echoing Bishop's previous correspondence with Marianne Moore. Swenson is shown to be one of the most acute readers of Bishop - sometimes almost too acute in her understanding of the many poetic dodges and balancing acts her older friend maintained in achieving an aesthetic response to Swenson's essentially Dionysic questioning.
Reading through each essay reveals Swenson's profound intellect, one that used an ongoing and unceasing internal discourse to create her own poetic vision, a vision imbued with complexly positive felicites, delighting the senses, even as darker thoughts jangle the mind.
Any first work on so fine a poet as Swenson is welcome; this work, with its variety of essays is especially true to its goal - a rereading and initial introduction to one of America's great poets. As the authors correctly put it, "Her work is ripe for further discovery." ... Read more

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This book examines the strategic possibilities of poetic self-restraint. Marianne Moore,Elizabeth Bishop, and May Swenson all wrote poetry that is marked by a certain reserve--precisely the motive against which most feminist poets and critics of the last thirty years have established themselves. Kirstin Hotelling Zona complicates this dichotomy by examining the conceptions of selfhood upon which it depends. She argues that Moore, Bishop, and Swenson expressed their commitment to feminism by exposing its most treasured assumptions: they not only challenge the ideal of autonomous self-definition, but also contest the integrity of a bodily or sexual authenticity by which that ideal is often measured.
In recent years critical studies of Bishop and Moore have flourished, a large percentage of them devoted to explorations of sexuality and gender. A gap is growing, however, between feminist repossessions of Moore and Bishop and recent readings of their antiessentialist poetics. On the one hand, these poets are appearing more frequently in the feminist canon, but the price of this inclusion is usually the suppression of their strategies of self-restraint. While Zona questions the poetic privileging of self-expression, she establishes contiguity between feminist poetry and developments in American poetry at large. In doing so she asserts the centrality of feminist poetry within discussions of contemporary American poetry, thereby challenging the common perception of feminist poetry as an "alternative" (which often means auxiliary) genre.
Kirstin Hotelling Zona is Assistant Professor of Poetry and Poetics, Illinois State University.
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Made With Words collects prose by May Swenson (1919-89), whom critic and poet John Hollander has called "one of our few unquestionably major poets." Born in Logan, Utah, she spent most of her adult life living and writing in New York City. She was an editor for New Directions Paperbacks, and a writer-in-residence at numerous universities during the 1960s and 1970s. Throughout her long and illustrious career, Swenson produced nine volumes of verse, including New and Selected Things Taking Place and In Other Words: New Poems. She was a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, and received a multitude of grants and awards during her lifetime.
Made with Words includes a rich assortment of Swenson's prose, including several short stories, by turns amusing, provocative, and poetic, and inextricably bound with her poetic oeuvre; a one-act play entitled The Floor, produced in New York in the mid-sixties; interviews and book reviews that shed light on Swenson's poetic development as well as her literary and artistic tastes; and finally, a collection of Swenson's letters to the poet Elizabeth Bishop that reveal the intricacies of three decades of their personal and professional relationship. The critical and biographical introduction provides an engaging glimpse into the creative life and prose work of an important contemporary American poet.
Gardner McFall is Assistant Professor of Literature, Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. She is the author of The Pilot's Daughter; Naming the Animals; and Jonathan's Cloud.
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Customer Reviews (1)

New Book of May Swenson's Prose
May Swenson (1913-1989) has long been a personal favorite of mine. Much of her work is difficult to find, or out of print.Gardner McFall, a poet herself,has done a wonderful job of editing the prose, reviews, introductions and the correspondence between Elizabeth Bishop(1913-1979) and May Swenson, although there is much to be found in the St. Louis's, Washington University Archives, where the bulk of May's papers are housed,this is a generous selection.

I am hoping that the McFall book will set May's publishers to consider a "Complete Works" of the wonderful May Swenson.McFall, however, is to be applauded for her rounding up and editingof these important prose selections.The book, part of the prestigious "Poets on Poetry"series from the University of Michigan Press, is a gift to both fans and scholars alike. ... Read more

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