Dear Elizabeth

by May Swenson

Between 1950 and 1979, May Swenson and Elizabeth Bishop exchanged over 260 letters. Their letters have interested scholars of American poetry for the commentary they contain on important work that each poet was publishing at the time, but equally for what these letters reveal about the relationship between the two writers. In Dear Elizabeth, three letters and five poems from Swenson to Bishop, including an unfinished draft never published before, are gathered into one small volume with an insightful essay by scholar and poet Kirstin Hotelling Zona. This brief but intense collection offers a surprising and revealing glimpse of a complicated relationship between two very different women and very different poets, both of whom made unquestionably major contributions to American poetry of the twentieth century. During her long career, May published eleven volumes of poetry, as well as individual poems in The New Yorker, Poetry, Parnassus, The Paris Review, Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, and many other major journals and anthologies; she received the Bollingen Prize for Poetry, along with Rockefeller, Ford, Guggenheim, and MacArthur fellowships.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction

32 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2000

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

[Miami University Libraries]

King Library (2nd floor) | PS3537.W4786 D43 2000

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very short volume that, through personal correspondence and five poems, provides an interesting look at two important American poets.