May Swenson

Poems

In Other Words

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 Culled from Swenson's published poetry as well as from her unpublished manuscripts, the poems in this collection provide an intimate glimpse of one of the most beloved American poets of the twentieth century, "a poet of dazzling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).

The Complete Love Poems of May Swenson

The first comprehensive edition of May Swenson's work, gathering all of the poems she published in the collections Another Animal (1954), A Cage of Spines (1958), To Mix with Time (1963), Half Sun Half Sleep (1967), Iconographs (1970), New and Selected Things Taking Place (1978), and In Other Words (1987), as well as an extensive selection of previously uncollected poems.

Collected poems

Scanning topics from a Navajo blanket to fashion in the seventies to an analysis of baseball to man's walk on the moon, Swenson views her poems as vital and living "things" acting out experiences on the written page

New & Selected Things Taking Place

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."

Poems Old and New

Nature

In celebration of the centenary of May Swenson’s birth, The Library of America presents a one-volume edition of all of the poems that Swenson published in her lifetime—from her first collection Another Animal (1954) to the innovative shaped poems of Iconographs (1970) to her final work In Other Words (1987)—as well as a selection of previously uncollected work. The collection reveals the sweeping compass of Swenson’s curiosity: nature poems display her keen observation of wildlife; exuberant and erotic love poems celebrate beauty and passion; place poems record her travels to the American Southwest, France, and Italy and her residence in New York City and Sea Cliff, Long Island; verse “analyses” investigate baseball, wave motion, the DNA molecule, bronco busting, James Bond movies, and the first walk on the moon. Swenson was an inveterate reviser: poems in earlier volumes were frequently reworked for inclusion in later volumes, such as To Mix with Time (1963) and New and Selected Things Taking Place (1978). While preserving the order of publication, this volume presents the author’s final or definitive version. Substantive textual variants and title changes are detailed in the notes to the volume.

(Library of America #239)

May Swenson: Collected Poems

Another Animal

May Out West

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.

The Complete Poems to Solve

Glen Downey

Robin Joseph

Water Picture

Southbound on the Freeway

Elizabeth Bishop

Kirstin Hotelling Zona

A selection of poems and letters sent from May Swenson to Elizabeth Bishop are accompanied by an essay.

May Swenson

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