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PARTISAN REVIEW
and gives a "credible account of the human voice." Although May
Swenson,
c.K.
Williams, and Alan Dugan explore vastly different emo–
tional and stylistic ranges in their poetry, what links them are their
unique and distinctive poetic voices. Each of these voices occupies its
own register of speech and shows, as Grossman believes poetry must, "the
continuity of a whole human world."
The familiar voice in May Swenson's In
Other Words: New Poems
speaks with a naturalist's love for the variety and particularity of the
world. In poems that take great delight in discovering the shapes and
associations hidden in the natural world, Swenson pays homage to
Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, yet her poems are quirkier, more
playful and more celebratory than her two precursors. In "Three White
Vases," Swenson suggests that the act of making a metaphor precedes the
act of description so that the three white egrets she sees "On a lonely,
reedy patch/ of sand" are first vases, "each differently shaped." By such
perceptions Swenson leads us from the surprises inherent in the world
back to the world itself. In an elegy for Elizabeth Bishop, Swenson
writes, "A life is little as a dropped feather. Or split shell/ tossed ashore,
lost under sand... . But vision lives!/ Vision, potent, regenerative, lives
in bodies of words." May Swenson's "bodies" are not metaphorical or
symbolic but corporeal, shaped and formed in our mouths as we speak.
These bodies make the vision which provides continuity to the human
world. Swenson continues her elegy for Bishop, " ... vision multiplies/
is magnified in the bodies of words.! Not vanished, your vision lives from
eye to eye,! your words from lip to lip perpetuated."
Although May Swenson often writes about nature and geographies,
she is not a poet of place. Instead she is a steadfast and faithful visitor
who masks her restlessness with a clear-eyed optimism and curiosity. As a
result she searches with patience for" ... the scene beyond the apron of
the eye/ about to shift," as she writes in "From a Daybook." Sometimes
we may feel that a poem has missed this subtle 'shift.' When this happens
Swenson's poems can be too purely descriptive. But even when this oc–
curs, as it does in "Teddy Bears" and "Shuttles," the writing is always full
of exuberance as the poet looks for ways to praise and enjoy the world.
In a section of the book titled "Comics," Swenson plays with the
shape of stanzas (one of her long-standing trademarks), mimics songs and
advertisements, and includes a parody of a
New Yorker
poem. Her humor
and wit are not limited to parody and comedy however. In the poem
"Strawberrying," from the book's first section, she writes an optimist's
reply to Sylvia Plath's "Blackberrying." Her poem ends with an auda–
cious pun, " - I rise/ and stretch. I eat one more big ripe lopped/ head.
Red-handed, I leave the field." This leads us delightfully back to the
poem's opening line, "My hands are murder-red."
