DRIVING THE BODY BACK

by Mary Swander

Poems deal with mortality, grief, families, country life, friendship, the past, nature, and memories

Genres: Poetry

81 pages, Hardcover

First published April 12, 1986

Reviews

[Tara · Rating 5 out of 5]

i plucked this book off my shelf while clearing some things out and flipped to a random page and after one poem i flipped to the beginning and read this cover to cover. it’s been so long since a poetry collection pulled me in like this. one of my favorite reads of the year.

[B. Jean · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'd seen this book mentioned in one of my other grief books. Swander wrote these family portrait poems as a response to driving the body of her mother a long distance.

I was struck by how familiar the poems seemed to me. Des Moines was mentioned, as well as Hy-Vee, and I realized she must be from the midwest, and that's where the family was located. In the back of the book I learned Swander was born in 1950 in Carroll, Iowa - went to Georgetown and then the University of Iowa and the writer's workshop.

1950 is 7 years before my mother was born. These stories could've been about my own family. They felt familiar and dear, and deeply tragic in the no-nonsense way of rural Iowa. I loved them fiercely.

I want a copy of this book.

[Joy Kidney · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gritty and compelling gathering of family episodes, capturing diverse personalities by poignant details. I was especially taken with Aunt Nell.

[Jen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting, fast read, but I found more historical interest than poetic interest in it. Swander is a competent poet but these poems do not stand out. The book consists of nine character sketches of family members, marking how they lived and the peculiarities of how they died. These life stories are lightly enveloped in the speaker's drive to take her mother's body back to rest with all of her family members. Here's a taste from "Ed":

Ed knew his chickens and he knew
his ducks. Every morning
he stepped out of his trailer
with a bucket of corn, stuck his fingers
in his mouth and whistled.
Then they lifted into the air,
some from the creek, some from the fields.
Round and round above the house,
the mallards circled, their glossy-green heads,
white neck-rings, shining.
Then they lit down next to his feet,
slipping kernels from his hand.
In the fall, during hunting season,
Ed shut them up in the visitors' trailer,
and they stayed all winter,
bleating out their calls over the snow.
Inside his trailer,
geraniums blooming in the windows,
Ed spent the long dark nights
studying birds. Bent over books,
her read out loud to Fanny
about the male red-bellied woodpecker
tapping inside his nest hole
to attract a mate, the female alighting
outside, tapping her answer.

These poems are a testament to rural life and characters as well as the pull of home and family. They can be enjoyed as such but don't expect them to reach for anything higher.

[Pete · Rating 5 out of 5]

RIYL you like rural midwestern deathways