May Swenson

Although her conservative family struggled to accept that she was a lesbian, they remained close throughout her life. Much of her later poetry was devoted to children (e.g. the 1970 collection Iconographs). She also translated the work of contemporary Swedish poets, including the selected poems of Nobel laureate Tomas Tranströmer.

May Swenson studied at Utah State University and Logan High School. The recorded working language is Swedish and English. The field of work recorded is poetry. Employment is recorded with Utah State University. Works named in the authority record are A Cage of Spines. Distinctions recorded are Guggenheim Fellowship, MacArthur Fellows Program, Bollingen Prize and Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets.

• Name — May Swenson • Born — May 28, 1913 • Birthplace — Logan, Utah, U.S. • Died — 4 December 1989 • Place of death — Salisbury, Maryland, U.S. • Occupation — Poet and Playwright, Chancellor of Academy of American Poets • Education — Utah State University

Swenson attended Utah State University in Logan, Utah, graduating in 1934 with a bachelor's degree. She taught poetry as poet-in-residence at Bryn Mawr College, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, the University of California, Riverside, Purdue University, and Utah State University. From 1959 to 1966 she worked as a manuscript reviewer at New Directions Publishing. Swenson left New Directions Press in 1966 in an effort to focus on her writing. She served as a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1980 until her death in 1989. She is buried in the Logan City Cemetery, and her grave is marked by a granite bench on which is etched some of her poetry. For the last 20 years of her life, she lived in Sea Cliff, New York. In 1936, Swenson worked as an editor and ghostwriter for a man called "Plat", who became her "boyfriend". "I think I should like to have a son by Plat", she wrote in her diary, "but I would not like to be married to any man, but only be myself." Her poems were published in Antaeus, The Atlantic Monthly, Carleton Miscellany, The Nation, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Saturday Review, Parnassus, and Poetry. Her poem Question was also published in Stephenie Meyer's book The Host.

Swenson created poems in "iconograph" style, first published in her 1970 book Iconographs, in which she shaped lines of her poetry to create images relating to the poem's content. Her work "The Lowering", for instance, a memorial poem for Robert F. Kennedy, explored Kennedy's military funeral, with lines arranged in the shape of a folded flag. Swenson is known for her heavy use of natural imagery, mixed with religious and philosophical themes. Her poem "Snow By Morning", which was published in The New Yorker, compares a snowfall to the biblical fall of manna. Swenson's sense of imagery also lends itself to erotic poems, as she describes human bodies, breasts, limbs, and the "pelvic heave of mountains". Author Jean Gould called Swenson's work "sensual as well as sexual."

• Another Animal (Scribner, 1954); • A Cage of Spines (Rinehart, 1958); • To Mix with 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 Solve (Scribner, 1971); • New & Selected Things Taking Place (Little, Brown, 1978); • In Other Words (Knopf, 1987); • Collected Poems (Library of America, 2013).

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

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

Her recorded languages were Swedish and English. Her recorded confession was The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

May Swenson worked in poetry. She was employed by Utah State University. She belonged to American Academy of Arts and Letters.