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 Culled from Swenson's published poetry as well as from her unpublished manuscripts, the poems in this collection provide an intimate glimpse of one of the most beloved American poets of the twentieth century, "a poet of dazzling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).
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"May Swenson is one of our few unquestionably major poets." (John Hollander )
"I love May Swenson for her absence of narcissism and for her childlike wonder before nature and self. In her poems, nature is self, and so love is a much a fulfillment of one's nature as it is an embrace of the other. 'Do not be afraid,' May Swenson tells us, and I believe her. She is a daring, sensual, purely American poet." (Henri Cole )
"I love May Swenson for her absence of narcissism and for her childlike wonder before nature and self. In her poems, nature is self, and so love is a much a fulfillment of one's nature as it is an embrace of the other. 'Do not be afraid,' May Swenson tells us, and I believe her. She is a daring, sensual, purely American poet." (Henri Cole )
About the Author
May Swenson (1913-1989) received many awards for her work, among them the Bollingen Prize and a MacArthur Fellowship. She published eleven volumes of poems during her lifetime.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Read Them in Historical Context,
By Lyric Poet "Lyric Poet" (San Francisco) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Complete Love Poems of May Swenson (Paperback)
May doesn't need defending, but here goes. You have to read the poems in historical context to understand how brave she was to write them. She had to overcome not only fear of the public, and of the poetry industry, but of-- in those days-- the psychiatric associations, and all the internalized voices of her distant youth. This was wrong. This was bad. The self censorship was the most stringent censorship of all back then. She may not be Bishop, as a pure lyricist, but she was far braver.
3 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
weaker than i expected,
By adead_poet@hotmail.com "adead_poet@hotmail.com" (Beaumont, tx USA) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE)
This review is from: The Complete Love Poems of May Swenson (Paperback)
I really expected a lot out of this collection, but I found it to be rather weak as a whole. In fact, many of the poems were a stretch as to if I'd even call them love poems. "Because I Don't Know" stands out as both a great poem and a great love poem. But one of the other of the best poems "Strawberrying" is a stretch, I think, to call it a love poem, though there is some sensual imagery in it. I just thought that this collection would be better than what it is.
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
Your eyes are just like bees, and I feel like a flower. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Time's Book New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Your eyes are just like bees, and I feel like a flower. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Time's Book New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 4
books:
- Poems to Solve by May Swenson in Front Matter
- The Guess and Spell Coloring Book by May. Swenson in Front Matter
- New and Selected Things Taking Place by May Swenson in Front Matter
- In Other Words by May Swenson in Front Matter
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