New and Selected Things Taking Place by May Swenson
"New and Selected Things Taking Place" is a comprehensive collection of over twenty-five years of poetry by May Swenson, showcasing her evolution as a prominent figure in contemporary American poetry. The volume features poems drawn from her previous five collections, demonstrating her diverse thematic interests and innovative forms. Swenson's work spans a variety of subjects, from nature to personal experiences, often infused with playful wit and childlike wonder. Notably, her experimentation with form includes riddles and shaped poems that visually enhance the reading experience, although she presents some of these works in traditional formats in this collection to emphasize their literary merit.
As Swenson matured as a poet, her style became increasingly refined, focusing on clarity and deep imagery, as seen in her later pieces like "October." Recognized for her significant contributions to poetry, Swenson received numerous accolades, including the Bollingen Prize. Importantly, her work does not overtly embrace feminist themes; instead, it directs attention outward, reflecting her belief that poetry is a shared experience. Her unique voice and approach have made her a respected figure, appreciated not only for her literary artistry but also for her connections with other poets and visual artists, such as Georgia O'Keeffe. This collection offers a compelling invitation to explore the breadth and depth of Swenson's poetic landscape.
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New and Selected Things Taking Place by May Swenson
First published: 1978
Type of work: Poetry
Form and Content
New and Selected Things Taking Place brings together more than a quarter-century’s worth of May Swenson’s best verse. Together with In Other Words (1989), a collection published two years before her death, this volume provides an excellent overview of Swenson’s skill, range, and development as a respected voice in contemporary American poetry.
The book, which contains works from Swenson’s five previous volumes of poetry, reveals the wide range of subjects and forms with which she worked. Although she was sometimes characterized as a nature poet because of her perceptive treatment of birds and other wild creatures, she was just as much at home writing about a flight into space or a visit to the dentist. Much of her work is witty and playful, showing the reader the world through a child’s eyes, as in “By Morning”:
Some for everyone
This poem, one of the several “riddling” poems in the book, scatters clues before the reader, but never mentions its subject—snow. Rather, Swenson leads the reader to discover the subject through images that are at once fresh and familiar: “By morning we’ll be children/ feeding on manna/ a new loaf on every doorsill.”
Swenson’s playfulness is also evident in her shaped poems—“image-writing,” as she described them—in which she arranged the lines on the page to enhance the meaning of the poem. Thus, in “The Blue Bottle,” the words outline the shape of a bottle. In “How Everything Happens,” a poem written after close observation of how ocean waves gather, break, and recede, the lines of the poem gather, break, and recede on the page, giving visual emphasis to the poem’s message. It is interesting that in New and Selected Things Taking Place, Swenson presented a selection of previously published shaped poems without their distinctive shapes. In so doing, she made the point that these poems are not merely visual gimmicks—that they work, first and foremost, as poems.
Riddles and shaped poems were two of the ways in which Swenson experimented in her work. Unconventional punctuation was another. This book makes it plain, however, that as Swenson matured as a poet, her poetic forms became more conventional. Behind her later work is a mature poet, more aware than ever of her strengths and less willing to divert her reader’s attention from what she does best. What May Swenson does best throughout her work is use poetry truly to see the world. One of the finest poems of her later years, “October,” shows Swenson’s mature style at work, as she speaks in hard, clear images of gratefully growing older:
I sit with braided fingers
New and Selected Things Taking Place presents the range of Swenson’s work and documents her development as a poet who believed—as the book’s title suggests—that a poem is a form of experience, a “thing taking place” for the reader, as well as for the poet.
Context
Swenson was acknowledged to be one of the most gifted woman poets of this century, and her accomplishments were recognized by such awards as Yale University’s Bollingen Prize, and by grants and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. She did not, however, call attention to herself as a woman poet. There is no particularly feminist point of view in her work, largely because her work directed the reader’s attention out upon the world, rather than in upon herself.
It is not particularly helpful to pursue questions of influence on Swenson. She felt a special kinship with poets such as Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, as well as an affinity for the work of another master of wordplay, E. E. Cummings. There were, as well, poets whom she considered “healthy to read,” and they are rather a mixed bag—Theodore Roethke, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman. Among her contemporaries, Swenson expressed admiration for Richard Wilbur, Anthony Hecht, and Anne Sexton, but this was not a matter of influence or imitation. Swenson acknowledged as much affinity with such visual artists as Georgia O’Keeffe and Marcel Duchamp as with any literary artist. In short, Swenson was a poet who resists easy categorization, just as her poems resist analysis and paraphrase. Her work speaks for itself.
Bibliography
Gould, Jean. Modern American Women Poets. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1984. Gould’s volume of literary biographies contains the single most complete account of Swenson’s life. It includes details of her childhood and describes her associations with other writers, especially Robert Frost and Elizabeth Bishop. Gould also explores Swenson’s longtime relationship with teacher and author Rozanne Knudson.
Howard, Richard. Alone with America. New York: Atheneum, 1969. This book-length study of modern American poets includes a chapter on Swenson, “Turned Back to the Wild by Love.” Howard provides a fine, detailed study of Swenson’s poetics and technique, using dozens of examples from her early poems.
Salter, Mary Jo. “No Other Words.” The New Republic 201 (March 7, 1988): 40-41. This review of Swenson’s last volume of poems, In Other Words, offers a brief but perceptive discussion of Swenson’s strengths and limitations as a poet. Salter compares her work to that of poets as diverse as Elizabeth Bishop and George Herbert.
Stanford, Ann. “May Swenson: The Art of Perceiving.” The Southern Review 5 (Winter, 1969): 58-75. This essay treats Swenson as a master of seeing and perceiving. Through numerous examples, Stanford explores Swenson’s ability to surprise and delight the reader by observing the world from unexpected angles or by capturing the telling detail that most people miss.
Swenson, May. “An Interview with May Swenson: July 14, 1978.” Interview by Karla Hammond. Parnassus: Poetry in Review 7 (Fall/Winter, 1978): 60-75. In this piece, Swenson talks in some detail on a range of subjects, from her childhood and education to her writing habits, her approach to poetry, and her admiration for such poets as Elizabeth Bishop and E. E. Cummings.