[Andrew Szilvasy]

Aaron,

I've not read Swenson a great deal, but your website post on "Ocean, Whale-Shaped" and your directing me to "Bleeding" have got me intrigued.

[Aaron Novick]

I bought her Library of America volume solely on the strength of Bleeding. The first few books collected in it were good, but mixed bags. But with Half Sun Half Sleep she really found herself—what an amazing volume of poetry. And "Bleeding" is from Iconographs, her next book—looking forward to that one as well.

She plays a lot with formatting, with how the poem looks on the page, while also being deeply attuned to how the poem sounds. (She's adept with both meter and rhyme.) Concrete poetry that liquifies in the mouth.

[Andrew Szilvasy]

Originally Posted by Aaron Novick

She plays a lot with formatting, with how the poem looks on the page, while also being deeply attuned to how the poem sounds. (She's adept with both meter and rhyme.) Concrete poetry that liquifies in the mouth.

This is what I saw in "Bleeding," and that's absolutely up my alley in ways that a lot of poetry is not. It's an enticing combination.

[Aaron Novick]

Here's another I really like:



Interestingly, I discovered in searching for a version of this that had the formatting that it was published in The New Yorker formatted as three four-line stanzas. I wonder if that was TNY's decision, or whether it simply took her time to hit on the formatting.

[Jim Moonan]

Thanks for introducing her. I, too, think there is more that can be done on the page with formatting than to simply stack your lines one ontop another.
The Egg poem is excellent, too.

And this:
"Concrete poetry that liquifies in the mouth"
is the most imagistic description of what a poem does that I've heard in quite a while.
x

[Andrew Szilvasy]

I've finally gotten around to working my way through Ashbery at your request. Enjoying, slowly, the selection of Some Trees, but jumped ahead to the famous "Self-Portrait," which I had somehow avoided reading. Stunning.

Bought Swenson after that. I'll have her collected in my hands tomorrow.

[Orwn Acra]

I had never read any of her poems until recently. There are certain similarities between her and her contemporary, though he lived much longer, Edwin Morgan in that each poem seems to invent a new form, the expensiveness of their subjects, and an eye on how the poem looks on the page (which, as a side note, her Collected as published by the Library of America should have printed no more than one poem per page). I connect with Morgan’s work more but there are delights in hers throughout, like this last part of “Summer’s Bounty”:

melons of Water........glories of Morning
melons of Musk..........rooms of Mush
cherries of Pie............days of Dog
cherries of Choke.......puppies of Hush