Nature: Poems Old and New

by May Swenson, Susan Mitchell (Foreword)

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."

Genres: Poetry, Animals

240 pages, Paperback

First published May 23, 1994

About the author

Anna Thilda May "May" Swenson was born in Logan, Utah to Swedish immigrant parents—and she grew up speaking Swedish at home. Swenson earned a BA from Utah State University and briefly worked as a reporter in Salt Lake City. She moved to New York City in the 1930s. Swenson is considered one of mid-twentieth-century America’s foremost poets.

Swenson’s poetry was widely praised for its precise and beguiling imagery, and for the quality of its personal and imaginative observations. Swenson’s ability to draw out the metaphysical implications of the material world were widely commented on; but she was also known for her lighthearted, even joyous, take on life.

Swenson left New York City in 1967, when she moved to Sea Cliff, Long Island where she lived with her partner, the author R.R. Knudson. During her prolific career, Swenson received numerous literary awards and nominations for her poetry. She taught and served as poet-in-residence at many institutions in both the United States and Canada, and she held fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation. She was the recipient of the Shelley Memorial Award, the Bollingen Prize, and Award in Literature from the National Institute of Arts and Letters. She received an honorary degree from Utah State University as well as their Distinguished Service Gold Medal. Swenson was a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1980-1989.

-- from The Poetry Foundation

Reviews

[Mmars · Rating 5 out of 5]

For most of the winter, this book has been following me around the house. Beside my bed, on the bathroom bookshelf (a great place for poetry books!) in the study and today I thought, "Why have I not written a review of this thing?"

Well, mainly because I've still read only a portion of the poems. I keep getting caught up by one of them and find myself reading it over again and then again. But also because I find it extremely difficult to write about/review poetry. Now, I feel being impelled to read a poem over and over is often an indication of the poem's brilliance. So I'g just going to give this thing 5 stars and share one poem that I think I've read 100 times now.

THE SURFACE

First I saw the surface,
then I saw it flow,
then I saw the underneath.

In gradual light below,
I saw a kind of room,
the ceiling was a veil,

a shape swam there
slow, opaque and pale.
I saw enter by a shifting corridor

other blunt bodies
that sank toward the floor.
I tried to follow deeper

with my avid eye.
Something changed the focus:
I saw the sky,

a glass between inverted trees.
Then I saw my face.
I looked until a cloud

flowed over that place.
Now I saw the surface
broad to its rim,

here gleam, there opaque
far out, flat and dim.
Then I saw it was an Eye:

I saw the Wink that slid
from underneath the surface
before it closed its lid.

[Paula · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this collection much more than I thought I would. Part of that, of course, stems from my natural inclination towards poets in Delaware (although, of course, Swenson was not from Delaware and did not, so far as I know, live here for an extended period of time--although she did die here) and poems like "In the Bodies of Words" are special because of that. I also was incredibly impressed by her compression; I can't remember the last time I read poems so tightly woven and meticulously shaped. It definitely reminded me of some morphing of Gerard Manly Hopkins and William Carlos Williams.

The one thing that did not impress me was the "experimental" poetry, because it looks more like a way to play with words on the page rather than using the words themselves (in place of the space on the page) to create specific images, if that makes sense. My one exception to this is "The Blue Bottle," which is pretty extraordinary.

Overall, the poems about death resonated most with me (I'll blame that on Harry Kalas), as they were simply spot-on in terms of emotional intensity and originality. The strength of Swenson's poetry, I think, is that originality that comes out in all of her poems; she saw everyday things, things mostly overlooked in fact, and made them worthwhile to be noticed. This particular collection focuses on nature, so each poem has references to natural images even if those things are not the primary focus of the poems themselves. I saw some of the sexual innuendos and thought they were tastefully done but, again, I found the poems about death to be more enlightening.

This book is like taking a crash course in Swenson's work. It's indicative of each time period Swenson wrote in, and it's a stunning, impressive body of work in and of itself.

[Elena Sala · Rating 5 out of 5]

According to Harold Bloom, May Swenson (1913-1989) was one of the twentieth century’s three best women poets. Quite an endorsement, I must say.

She was born in Utah and grew up in a Mormon family. During the first six years of her life, May spoke only Swedish, and did not learn English until she entered the first grade of the neighborhood public school. She loved going to school and picked up English very quickly. Her poems are characterized by the close observation and the sensuous, description of the physical world. "May Swenson sees more minutely than anyone, and with a nearly holy exactitude", Cynthia Ozick said. "I feel that she is putting her face very close to the world", Susan Mitchell tells us in the foreword of this volume.

Swenson is attracted to the odd, to the minute. Everything becomes remarkable under her gaze. Her descriptive powers are astounding, her use of wordplay is imaginative and surprising.

Nature: Poems Old and New (1994) includes poems from all her published volumes (it also includes ten previously unpublished). Most of the poems are about the natural world, but there are many about gender and sexuality, loss and grieving, scientific discoveries and how they shape our lives. There are so many beautiful poems, but if I had to choose one, "Feel me" is the one I love best, the one I've reread countless times. You can read it here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem...

[Makinlin Verbrugge · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Nature” is a poetry collection about various aspects of nature. I purchased this book to help me with a project I am working on, and I do not regret it one bit. It just kept reinforcing the idea that it was exactly what I needed. The poems themselves are kind of hit and miss on impact, but they’re well written and surely speak to some people. There was a lot more sensual content than I expected in such a compilation, but it was still enjoyable to explore more of this style.

[Abby · Rating 2 out of 5]

I like May Swenson, but I found these poems silly and almost amateurish.

[Jeanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

A read for my upcoming poetry workshop in Santa Fe.