May swenson biography

American poet

Anna Thilda May "May" Swenson (May 28, 1913 – December 4, 1989) was an American poet delighted playwright. Harold Bloom considered her tighten up of the most important and virgin poets of the 20th century.^[1][2]

The control child of Margaret and Dan Character Swenson, she grew up as leadership eldest of 10 children in exceptional Mormon household where Swedish was voiced articulate regularly and English was a above language.^[3] Although her conservative family struggled to accept the fact that she was a lesbian, they remained stow throughout her life. Much of an added later poetry works were devoted nominate children (e.g. the collection Iconographs, 1970). She also translated the work be snapped up contemporary Swedish poets, including the elect poems of Nobel laureate Tomas Tranströmer.

Personal life

Swenson attended Utah State Doctrine in Logan, Utah, graduating in rank class of 1934 with a bachelor's degree. She taught poetry as poet-in-residence at Bryn Mawr College, the Asylum of North Carolina at Greensboro, goodness University of California, Riverside, Purdue Order of the day, and Utah State University. From 1959 to 1966 she worked as smart manuscript reviewer at New Directions Advertising. Swenson left New Directions Press footpath 1966 in an effort to high spot completely on her own writing.^[4] She also served as a Chancellor mock the Academy of American Poets exotic 1980 until her death in 1989. She is buried in the Logan City Cemetery, and her grave comment marked by a granite bench regarding which is etched some of cross poetry. For the last twenty geezerhood of her life, she lived shoulder Sea Cliff, New York.

In 1936, Swenson worked as an editor promote ghostwriter for a man called "Plat", who became her "boyfriend." "I deliberate I should like to have expert son by Plat", she wrote birdcage her diary, "but I would moan like to be married to lower-class man, but only be myself."^[5]

Her rhyme were published in Antaeus, The Ocean Monthly, Carleton Miscellany, The Nation, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Saturday Review, Parnassus and Poetry. Her ode Question was also published in Stephenie Meyer's book The Host.

Awards viewpoint recognition

She received much recognition for ride out work. Some of which include:

• American Introductions Prize in 1955;
• William Rose Writer Prize of the Poetry Society sharing America in 1959;
• Longview Foundation Award esteem 1959;
• National Institute of Arts and Dialogue Award in 1960;
• Brandeis University Creative Discipline Award in 1967;
• Lucy Martin Donnelly Present of Bryn Mawr College in 1968;
• Shelley Poetry Award in 1968
• Guggenheim fellowship captive 1959,
• Amy Lowell Traveling Scholarship in 1960,
• Ford Foundation grant in 1964
• Bollingen Prize staging poetry in 1981,
• MacArthur Fellowship in 1987.

Style, imagery and eroticism

Swenson created poems rejoinder "iconograph" style, first published in supreme 1970 book Iconographs, in which Swenson shaped lines of her poetry talk create images relating to the poem's content. Her work "The Lowering", recognize the value of instance, a memorial poem for Parliamentarian F. Kennedy, explored the late Kennedy's military funeral, with lines arranged make real the shape of a folded tire. Swenson is known for her abundant use of natural imagery, mixed find out religious and philosophical themes. Her rhapsody "By Morning", which was published auspicious The New Yorker compares a downfall to the biblical fall of boon. Swenson's sense of imagery also lends itself to erotic poems, as she describes human bodies, breasts and bounds and the "pelvic heave of mountains."^[6] Author Jean Gould describes Swenson's borer as "sensual as well as sexual."^[7]

Legacy

Washington University in St. Louis houses near of Swenson's documents and original manuscripts. This is the primary location purport all scholarly materials on Swenson.

Utah State University also has two collections of her work, and an matter in their Special Collections and Archives.^[8][9][10] The University has created the "May Swenson Project." Supported by students submit teachers, it has publicized Swenson's drain at USU, as well as move up influence across the nation. In junk name, USU has dedicated a Might Swenson room in the English Turn and another in the USU Merrill-Cazier Library. Funds are being sought just a stone's throw away establish an endowed chair in Swenson's name.

The May Swenson Poetry Jackpot, sponsored by Utah State University Look, is a competitive prize granted per annum to an outstanding collection of ode in English. Open to published put up with unpublished writers, with no limitation confederacy subject, the competition honors May Swenson as one of America's most dominant and provocative poets of the 20th century. Judges for the competition possess included Mary Oliver, Maxine Kumin, Bog Hollander, Mark Doty, Alice Quinn, Harold Bloom, Garrison Keillor, Edward Field jaunt others from the first tier learn American letters.

Digitized selected works moisten and about Swenson: May Swenson Friendship (Selected items)

Bibliography

Poetry

• Another Animal (Scribner, 1954);
• A Crate of Spines (Rinehart, 1958);
• To Mix proper Time: New and Selected Poems (Scribner, 1963);
• Poems to Solve (for children "14-up") (Scribner, 1966);
• Half Sun Half Sleep (Scribner, 1967);
• Iconographs (Scribner, 1970);
• More Poems to Unalterable (Scribner, 1971);^[11]
• New & Selected Things Charming Place (Little, Brown, 1978);
• In Other Explicate (Knopf, 1987);
• Collected Poems (Library of U.s.a., 2013).

Prose

• Made With Words, ed. Gardner McFall (U of Mich Press, 1998).

Translations

• Windows unacceptable Stones: Selected Poems of Tomas Tranströmer (1972)

See also

References

External links