May Swenson

Critic John Ciardi once said, "May Swenson is not a promise, but a fact. She has daring, a true feeling for the structure of the whole poem, precision of phrase, and a magic eye for the exact image."¹ But who was May Swenson? Swenson (1913-1989) was a prolific American poet who published ten poetry collections in her lifetime, including three specifically geared towards children. She lived through the Great Depression and World War II, and that time of uncertainty is reflected in much of her poetry. Known for her sensual, vivid imagery, erotic wordplay, and unconventional use of typography, Swenson was a well-known poet in the mid-20th century.

May Swenson Biography

May Swenson was born Anna Thilda May Swenson in Logan, Utah, in 1913. Her parents were Swedish immigrants, and Swenson grew up with English as her second language. She was raised in a Mormon household but fell away from the conservative religion in her early teens. Her family struggled to accept her homosexuality, a fact that Swenson kept secret for much of her life.

Swenson earned a BA from Utah State University in 1934. After a brief stint working as a reporter in Utah, she moved to New York City. She worked a variety of odd jobs as a ghostwriter, secretary, stenographer, and manuscript reader. In 1959, she received a job as a stenographer and editor at New Directions Press, which was a modernist publishing house. She left seven years later to focus entirely on her writing.

Swenson worked several different jobs in the publishing industry before leaving to focus on her own writing, unsplash

Swenson published ten collections of poetry in her lifetime, three of which were geared toward children. Her first collection, Another Animal, was published in 1954. It was followed by A Cage of Spines (1958), To Mix with Time: New & Selected Poems (1963), Poems to Solve (1966), Half Sun Half Sleep (1967), More Poems to Solve (1968), New & Selected Things Taking Place (1978), and In Other Words (1987). She also had three posthumous collections: The Love Poems (1991), Nature: Poems Old and New (1994), and May Out West (1996). Her collections for children, including Poems to Solve (1966), More Poems to Solve (1968), and Spell Coloring Book (1976), were published in the latter half of her career.

Swenson also taught poetry at a number of colleges as poet-in-residence in the late 1960s and early 70s. These colleges include Bryn Mawr, the University of North Carolina, the University of California at Riverside, Purdue University, and Utah State University.

Swenson died from a heart attack in 1989. She was in her winter home at Bethany Beach, Delaware, and had been suffering from severe asthma and high blood pressure.

May Swenson Background

Swenson left the safety of her Mormon household and moved to New York in the heart of the Great Depression. She collected her meager savings and $200 from her father and moved from Utah in 1936. Swenson had been influenced by the Lost Generation writers, who made Paris the hub of their literary careers. She yearned for a chance to grow in her writing.

But Swenson had no prospects in New York. After struggling to hold a series of odd jobs, she joined the Federal Writers Project (FWP) under false pretenses. FWP was a subsection of Federal Project Number One, a massive public works project designed to get the unemployed working again in the Great Depression. In order to get these jobs that the government provided, people had to be incredibly poor. Because of her father's career, Swenson was not eligible to work with FWP. So she lied and claimed that she was an orphan. In 1938, she got a job with the Living Lore Unit, recording people's firsthand narratives.

Having a job with FWP also meant that Swenson could receive financial support from the Workers Alliance of America (WAA). Swenson relied on welfare to help her through the Great Depression. This time of struggle and instability is evident in some of her earlier poetry.

The FWP and WAA helped Swenson survive the Great Depression when she came to New York with nothing, unsplash

Her time with FWP was short-lived, though, as the newly formed Special Committee on Un-American Activities began accusing writers with FWP of being Communists. Under heavy scrutiny from the Committee on Un-American Activities, Swenson's lie was discovered when the WAA tracked down her father. She was kicked out of the program in 1939. With the focus shifting to the growing war in Europe, the FWP was gradually defunded before it was terminated.

Nonetheless, the FWP and WAA allowed Swenson to stay in New York City and which helped define her writing style. Swenson's identity as a New Yorker would never have developed without the security they provided.

May Swenson Books

Swenson published ten poetry collections in her lifetime, and three posthumously. Three of Swenson's collections are written for children. Her 1966 Poems to Solve collection, for example, contains puzzles that young readers have to solve. The reader has to guess the poem's topic or its meaning, using only the words on the page. The poems start off easy and get increasingly more difficult as the collection progresses. This collection was followed by More Poems to Solve (1968) and Spell Coloring Book (1976), which were also written with the hope of instilling a love of poetry at a young age.

Although she published seven other collections in her lifetime, her three posthumous collections garner the most attention today. Nature: Poems Old and New (2000) examines the natural world as a powerful force full of multitudes. It is both beautiful and dangerous, intimate and deadly. The collection, in short, encompasses Swenson's nearly 50 years of work. Another of her popular collections is The Love Poems (1991). The title gives away the nature of the poems, and excerpts are often read at weddings.

May Swenson Poems

Two of Swenson's most famous poems are "The Centaur" (1956) and "Question" (2000).

"The Centaur"

"The Centaur" was first published in the Western Review in 1956, and it was reprinted in A Cage of Spines, Swenson's second collection of poetry, two years later. In the poem, the speaker reflects on how she spent her summer days as a child. Each day, she would cut a stick off the willow grove and pretend the stick was a horse. She fastened her brother's belt to her "horse," Rob Roy. The speaker and the horse would become one as they trotted around outside. She could feel the freedom and wilderness of the horse coursing through her as her hair became the mane of the horse and her feet became hooves. When she returned home, her mother would ask her where she'd been and why her mouth was green. The speaker would reply that she was riding Rob Roy and he—and by extension, her—had stopped in the pasture to eat grass. The poem examines childhood innocence and freedom from social expectations.

"Question"

Swenson's "Question" was first published posthumously in Nature: Poems Old and New (2000). The poem uses several rhetorical questions in succession to ponder what will happen to the speaker's physical body when she dies. Her body has been everything to her: her home, her protector, and her mode of transportation. She wonders where she will live, how she will hunt, and how she will get around. The speaker wonders how she will hide her soul without her body in the final stanza. Essentially, she examines the uncertainty of death and her fears of the unknown.

May Swenson Writing Style

Swenson's writing style has been compared to poets like E. E. Cummings, Gertrude Stein, and Elizabeth Bishop. Swenson is well-known for her precise imagery, which tends to be sensual and at times erotic. Her wordplay is adventurous and eccentric, giving her an original voice in the mid-20th century.

Swenson was also known for drawing on her personal experiences as well as her imaginary ones. This is especially evident in "The Centaur," in which Swenson based much of the poem on her childhood. Her intimate observations were paralleled by her deep speculations and existential questions, shown in "Question." Finally, she was unique in her use of typography. She created images within many of her poems, tending towards visual poetry while still remaining effective and succinct.