The Complete Love Poems

by May Swenson

Collected here are the complete love poems of May Swenson -- poems full of kindness, of sensuousness, of gentle affection, of love satisfied. As Maxine Kumin writes in her foreword to this collection, "the majority of Swenson's love poems are human you-and-I poems, exquisitely tender and understated." Culled from Swenson's published poetry as well as from her unpublished manuscripts, the poems in this collection provide an intimate glimpse of one of the most beloved American poets of the twentieth century, "a poet of dazzling gifts" (Joyce Carol Oates).

Genres: Poetry

160 pages, Paperback

First published August 15, 2003

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

[Slader R · Rating 4 out of 5]

may swenson was HORNY, wow.

may swenson had an incredible command over vivid imagery. these poems all showcase a lot of technical skill and knowledge.

a lot of the pieces are just very strong images or scenes, descriptions of beautiful moments, powerful occurrences of love, erotic encounters. they're well-written and enjoyable, of course, but i preferred all the pieces that were a little more complicated--the ones that had an edge of some kind. reckoning with finality or transience, expressions of heartbreak, stream-of-consciousness descriptions of complicated relationships. those were the poems that i connected with the most, and i also found that they contained the most powerful and most moving depictions of love in the collection.

may obviously had a lot of love to give and it shows. so sweet <3

[Michael P. · Rating 4 out of 5]

As usual, there are poems I cannot understand, some I did not like well enough to finish, and those I think are good to great, but the percentages are nicely tipped. I understand the vast majority. there were just two I did not finish, and the percentage of good to great poems is very high, especially the number of truly great poems. It is rare for me to read a book of poetry that speaks to me this much. Bravo May Swenson.

[christopher leibow · Rating 4 out of 5]

Swenson is a woman in full command of her images. I was impressed with how was able to use her images almost like montages to express her emotions. In her poem “Fireflies” she uses the image of light with great precision. I appreciate they ways she also takes the particular and expands it to the universal. She starts with the “love winks” of the firefly and extends it to, ‘the planetarium of the mind.” In her more successful poems there is a definite viscerality, which I feel is required for a poem be an effective love poem. In the poem, The Mortal Surge we sense such a viscerality. “We are eager/We pant / we whine like whips cutting the air.” These are visceral images and allow us to share the experience with the poet

[Dinah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having read only Little Lion Face and a couple of concrete poems before, I was all set to find May Swenson sentimental, or dated, or fraught with the "love that dare not speak its name" angst that now feels so very dramatic (although of course she'd be more than entitled to it, given all the givens of her life and moment). Anyhow, I was pleasantly surprised to find such subtle humor, meter and rhyme that still feel productive today, and of course the charming lover-as-animal-or-animate-vegetable poems for which I am always and forever a sucker. I look forward to reading more May Swenson in the future.