Swan's Island

by Elizabeth Spires

A reissuing of Swan’s Island, poetry by Elizabeth Spires.

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Elizabeth Spires is the author of five collections of poetry as well as several books for children. She has been the recipient a Whiting Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Amy Lowell Travelling Poetry Scholarship, and two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1998 she received the Witter Bynner Prize for Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Maryland Author Award from the Maryland Library Association. Her poems have been featured on National Public Radio and have appeared in The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, The New Criterion, and in many anthologies, including Contemporary American Poetry (7th edition) and The New Bread Loaf Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry. She lives in Baltimore with her husband, the novelist Madison Smartt Bell, and their daughter, and is a Professor of English at Goucher College where she holds a Chair for Distinguished Achievement.







Now the Green Blade Rises (2002)

>> read " 'In Heaven It Is Always Autumn' "





Worldling (1995)

>> read "Truro," "Worldling," and "Celia Dreaming"

Also by Elizabeth Spires

- Annonciade
- Swan's Island
- Globe

Editor

The Instant of Knowing: Lectures, Criticism, and Occasional Prose of Josephine Jacobsen

Books for Children

- The Mouse of Amherst
- I Am Arachne
- Riddle Road

Reviews

[Alexandra Mergen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read about Elizabeth Spires in Elizabeth Rush’s book Rising.

Spires is a new favorite. She writes with form and freedom. The title poem of this collection is a beauty.

Her poems about her mom’s death in Now the Green Blade Rises helped get me through my own mom’s death. She said what I wanted to say.