May Swenson Books

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 poetic powers 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.

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

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

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

THE BEAUTY OF MAY SWENSON'S POEMS IS THEY NEVER GET OLD. NO MATTER THE AMOUNT 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 IS TO FEEL CARESSED BY HER WORDS. DEFINITELY POEMS TO TAKE YOUR TIME READING BECAUSE HER USE OF WORDS AND IMAGES IS TRULY A PLEASURE TRIP FOR THE MIND.

A book that most readers can identify with!

I loved this book. It is well written, easy to read, and fun. The poems have a musical lilt, almost like jazz. The topics are of everyday life things that happen to all of us all the time. Good work.

This collection of poetry does what truly great poetry should do -- it touches so truly and so deeply upon the human condition -- the joy and the suffering of it -- that the personal voice of the poet becomes, as Galway Kinnell once wrote, just another voice of a creature on the planet speaking. Whether speaking of difficult or joyous times, the loss of love or its fond remembrance, the naming of a child, aging, or death, the poet's words enliven, enrich and expand the reader's own experience, outwitting despair, careening toward joy, encountering pain with courage, and then letting that pain go to the "dirt-borers," whose job it is to turn the dead back into the living again. This is poetry that can save your life on those dark winter nights when the only voice you can hear is the one of your own despair. If I had to choose one or two voices to have with me on such nights, voices to sail the psyche's frail ship to morning's shore, Ms. Fargnoli's would be chief among them.

This collection of poems piques the reader's senses and maintains interest throughout. The narrative with compelling characterizations keeps the reader moving along and even identifying with the mysterious Chinese aunt and her family in the United States. It is one of those rare books of poetry which you want to read to the very end without putting it down, and yet to enjoy stopping and mulling over individual poems. The encounters between Buddhist, Christian, and Confucian elements lend universal significance. This is the best poetry on today's literary scene.

This book is the winner of the May Swenson Poetry Award for 2000. While not a narrative poem, the story of the author's aunt that married a "Chinaman" and left her family only to return when she was dying, is as close as one can get. The poems tell of the author's need for connections and a sense of family and humanity that are inspiring and eternal. The bridge over all that divides us is, after all, built on hope and caring and sharing. A Marvelous collection.

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's correspondence 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."

Since Ann Stanford's death in 1987, her books have vanished from print and her name off the tongue of the current list of important American poets. This book, Stanford's last collection, had finally been published after over a decade's wait. It's a good one--another strong group of poems that meditate on geography, life, and art. Stanford's work has been likened to Elizabeth Bishop's--and for good reason! Stanford is a rare poet who understands the complex relationship between language and aesthetics.

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 editing of 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.

Frannie Lindsay holds an MFA from the Iowa Writer's Workshop, is a classical pianist, writes wonderful poetry, and resides with her three retired greyhounds. This book was the winner of the 2004 Swenson Poetry Award and none other than the renowned poet J.D. McClatchy, in praising her work stated, "In her craft in the truth." I first read this book, twice, late in the evening and was struck by the sense of calm and tranquility it brought after a somewhat hectic day. This even though the subject matter frequently deals with loss and pain and its attendant bewilderment, denial, and sorrow. Lindsay has the rare ability to convey her obviously genuine, heartfelt, truthful feelings about some of life's most sensitive subjects and make the reader feel, in the end, a sense of peace and hope. This is the type of book that stays on the bedside table.

This is incredile writing, Masters ability to give his characters a voice that reachs ones heart and mind simply amazing. Ernest Hyde, is an excellent example of this as well as Amanda Barker,Yee Bow and many others. These are the names of some the voices that Masters sets free. There dry innocent voices are oddly humorous and this is what i find the most refreshing.This is free verse at its finest.

Masters' Spoon River Anthology is as poignant today as when it was written. Part glimpse of history, part poetic essay on the eternal frailties of the human animal, the epitaphs are riveting from first to last. Read it. Then get a spoken word recording. Then read it again. You'll find these characters live on.

This has lots of background and biographical information. Plus it includes other materials. Well done. I was a little disappointed in the quality of the paper.

There IS an actual Spoon River in Fulton County, IL but no town by that name. Masters was speaking about that area because he was writing about what he knew. Like any great literature, it transcends time and place to have more universal meaning. Some characters are small town folk, others aspired to grow beyond and were thwarted by circumstance, while still others grew beyond Spoon River and were brought back home from their travels for eternal rest. "All, all are sleeping on the hill". Each character narrates his or her own brief story in a free verse poem, one per page. Some stories intersect as characters mention each other. It's interesting to cross reference characters in this regard. Sometimes the compliment of mention isn't returned. Upon first inspection, this might seem to be a rather morbid format. However, the characters speak more about their lives and human struggles than they do about death. Theirs are timeless tales about joy, accomplishment, pain, betrayal, discovery, loneliness and atonement.
This book is a real classic. It was given to me for my seventeenth birthday and I've collected several different volumes of it since then including one signed by the author. I think the dramatic format might still catch the attention of alot of teenagers and give them pause to reflect upon the deeper meanings in life. It's one of those must read's for anyone looking to read the American Classics.

Upon its release Edgar Lee Masters' collection of free verse poems must have shaken the literary universe. In an era when the mores of polite Victorianism were still lingering in an America concerned with all things proper, Masters dared pen a book in which the dead of a small Midwestern town lie not in a state of reservation before Christian resurrection, but in a condition of stasis, ruminating on their lives and speaking with candor on all they may have done. The dead who speak from their graves in these wondrous poems reveal their secrets, their unfulfilled dreams, their disapprobation at humanity's conduct. The dead are to varying degrees wise, ironic, witty, bitter, content, confused, and moralistic. They have regrets, they mock the values of we who are living, they seethe with longing, they confess universal truths at long last, they await they know not what, the arrival of eternity or a continuation of their suspended state of evaluation, in conditions of calm, content, fright, or regretless joy. There is one thing none of those who have passed away from the streets of Spoon River to its hallowed acre on the hill, are and that is quiet.

One of a dozen or so American poetical achievements that most fully justifies our nation's pride in its own literary accomplishments.

you'd be much better off to buy other volumes in the series. This two-volume anthology is generally a two-thousand page waste of time. Most poetry is consigned to oblivion for a reason! What is here rescued is frankly not worth it, and the "literature" here is of historical rather than intrinsic interest. A monument to "inclusivity" and "diversity," but full of poor writing, the Common Reader is here advised to invest in Library of America's wonderful volumes of the poetry of Frost, Stevens, Whitman, and, whenever they finally appear in the future, Dickinson, Melville, Eliot, and Bishop.

The real job of the anthologist is not, of course, to assemble anthologies but to anger and annoy readers. Only census takers have more doors slammed in their innocent faces. That said, a few words in defense of this excellent volume. Yes, there's plenty of second-tier or third-tier verse here, and those in search of pure poetry (no rocks, no soda, shaken not stirred) should probably save their pennies and buy the LOA volumes devoted to Frost, Stevens, etc etc. But a book like this one does give a splendid sense of cultural context. Sometimes the giants loom only larger when they're stuck in a line-up with their diminutive peers. And some of those lesser lights are actually quite talented, too. So unless you're truly fixated on iambic quality control, you should find much to love, and even more to like, in the capacious and paper-thin pages of APTTCV1.

I think the two volumes published thus far are only half of what's expected, but I'm not sure, as these were put into print five years ago, as far as I can tell. There is plenty to enjoy here, and some to rightfully forget. There's also plenty missing. (Attempts at political correctness can be so tedious and obvious.) For instance, on the enjoyment side, Marianne Moore's The Steeple-Jack is a wonder of construction, as is Robert Frost's obsessively worked out "Familiar with the Night." But such anthologies as this are always questioned as to the method of selection, the poets disregarded, and the poems picked. Why, for instance, was Marianne Moore's Octopus overlooked? Where are W. H. Auden, Robert Lowell, Adrienne Rich, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, Allen Ginsburg, and James Merrill, among so many others? Are they still to come? I hope so. And I just don't care for Gertrude Stein. Her work is unreadable and does nothing at all for me. I don't know why so much space is always allotted to her in so many anthologies. Yes, I get the point. No, I don't need 37 pages of this point. It seems her importance only lies in who she knew and how she lived, not in any actual talent she had.

If the Library of America is coming out with any more volumes to round out the twentieth century, they are taking their sweet time about it. I really can't wait that long. In the meantime, a new American anthology is due out from Oxford in 2006, edited by David Lehman. I've had a sneak peek, and it's inclusive and won't disappoint.

This volume is the second of a projected four volume anthology of Twentieth Century American Poetry in the Library of America series. American poetry richly deserves this extensive treatment, and this series may serve to introduce America's poets to a growing number of readers.

This volume begins with E.E.Cummings (born 1894) and concludes with May Swenson (born 1913) The volume has almost an embarrassment of riches. By my count there are 122 separate poets included. The book includes a brief biography of each writer included which is invaluable for reading the book.

As with any anthology of this nature,the selection is a compromise between inclusiveness and quality. Readers may quarrel with the relative weight given to various poets in terms of number of pages, and with the inclusion or exclusion of writers. (I was disappointed that a poet I admire, Horace Gregory, gets only two pages, for example). Overall, it is a wonderful volume and includes some greatpoetry.

There are favorites and familiar names here and names that will be familiar to few. A joy of a book such as this is to see favorites and to learn about poets one hasn't read before.

A major feature of this volume is its emphasis on diversity -- much more so than in volume 1 or in the Library of America's 19th century poetry anthologies. There are many Jewish poets (including Reznikoff, a favorite ofmine, Zukofsky, Alter Brody, Rose Drachler, George Oppen, Karl Shapiro, and others) and even more African-American Poets (Lanston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Richard Wright, Waring Cuney, Sterling Brown, Arna Bontemps, Robert Hayden and many more.) There are also selections from blues and popular songs which to me is overdone.

Of the poets unknown to me, I enjoyed particularly Lorine Niedecker, Laura Riding, and Janet Lewis -- women are well represented in this volume.

I have taken the title of this review from the Cape Hatteras section of "The Bridge" by Hart Crane.(page 229) Crane has more pages devoted to him than any other writer in the volume and deservedly so. "The Bridge" and "Voyages" are presented complete together with some of the shorter poems. This tragic, tormented and gifted writer tried in The Bridge to present a vision of America mystical in character, celebratory of the merican experience, and inclusive in its diversity. The poem is a worthy successor to the poetry of Whitman who is celebrated in it. The title of the review,I think, captures both Crane's poem as well as the goal of the volume as a whole in capturing something of the diversity of experience reflected in 20th Century American Verse.

Although not widely read and appreciated, American poetry underwent a renaissance in the Twentieth Century. At some point, readers will look back at our Twentieth Century poetry as a benchmark of literature and a guide to the thoughts, feelings, and events of our difficult century.

In this, the first of four projected volumes covering the Twentieth Century, the Library of America gives access to a treausre of reading, moving, elevating, and disturbing. The book consists of readings from 85 (by my count) poets. The poets, are arranged chronologically by the poet's birthday. The earliest writer in the volume is Henry Adams (born 1838) and the concluding writer is Dorothy Parker (born 1893). Some writers that flourished later in life, such as Wallace Stevens, thus appear in the volume before works of their peers, such as Pound and Elliot, who became famous earlier.

For me, the major poets in the volume are (not surprising choices here), Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, W.C. Williams, Ezra Pound, T.S. Elliot, Marianne Moore. They are represented by generous selections,including Elliot's Waste Land, Steven's Notes Towards a Supreme Fiction, and several Pound Canto's given in their entirety.

It is the mark of a great literary period that there are many writers almost equally meriting attention together with the great names. There are many outstanding writers here, some known, some unknown. To name only a few, I would includeE.A Robinson, James Weldon Johnson, Adelaide Crapsey, Vachel Lindsay, Sara Teasdale, H.D. Robinson Jeffers, John Crowe Ransom, Conrad Aiken, Samuel Greenberg. It would be easy to go on.

There are different ways to read an anthology such as this. One way is to browse reading poems as they catch the reader's eye. Another way is to read favorite poems the reader already knows.

I would suggest making the effort to read the volume through from cover to cover. Before beginning the paricular poet, I would suggest reading the biographical summary at the end of the volume. These are short but excellent and illuminate the authors and the poetry. The notes are sparse, but foreign terms in Pound and Elliot's poetry are translated, and we have selections from Elliot's and Marianne Moore's own notes.

By reading the volume through,one gets a sense of continuity and context. Then, the reader can devote attention to individual poems. Some twentieth century works, such as those by Pound, Elliott,Moore Stevens are notoriously difficult. Read the works through,if you are coming to them for the first time, and return to them later.

I was familiar with many of the poems in the book before reading the anthology but much was new to me. I learned a great deal. My favorite poet remains Wallace Stevens, partly because he comibined the life of a man of affairs, as an attorney and insurance executive, with deep art. This remains an ideal for me. It is true as well for W.C. Williams, although I am less fond of his poetry.

The title to this review is taken from "Libretto" by Ezra Pound,
(page 371). It is the best single sentence summation I can think of for the contents of this volume.

What we have here is a book that clearly shows its author has talent and skill. But the voice is not that indistinguishable from dozens of other poets all wanting to be the next Mark Doty. This is a safe collection--not that it avoids risky subjects--but that all of its subjects (art, fashion, AIDS)fall into the careful boundaries expected of a gay poet writing today. You could do worse. . . .

I loved this book because, simply put, Stephen McLeod has a crush on the world. Like a lot of crushes, this one breathes it all in. With startling detail it records all it sees, invests emotional risk at the least prompting, and generally rockets like a Texas bareback rider through the exquisite and beautiful sadness of it all. As I said - a crush. Thrilling, the nearness of the intoxication, the pure living breath of the beloved. But, unlike a lot of other crushes, this one is actually requited. Requited by the poems that result from this enamored encounter with the world. Poems whose mere existence is proof of what the beholder receives from the beloved. That chance to gaze without apology on beauty incarnate. Line after line confirms this love affair consummated by the poet's fluent observation of the world in which he lives. McLeod's is a poetry of style and wit, and yet it's constantly open to the weak-kneed sweet surrender of the human heart as it travels toward its inexplicable destiny. Seventy-five years after Hart Crane wrote, "Permit me voyage, love, into your hands..." Stephen McLeod's poems complete that journey.

"The Borgo of the Holy Ghost" like all books comes from the experience and the expression of the writer. Stephen McLeod connects with the reader. All Roads Lead to Kansas uses a poem to say something that couldn't otherwise be said. McLeod's poetry is spiritual. His 25 years of writing have put him in an enviable position. I look forward to his next book.