Nature: Poems Old and New

NATURE: POEMS OLD AND NEW, May Swenson (1913-1989). Houghton Mifflin, 2006.

In preparation for my Creative Retirement Institute course on May Swenson, beginning next Tuesday afternoon, I’ve been reading Swenson’s poetry and a collection of essays, Body My House: May Swenson’s Work and Life, edited by Paul Crumbley and Patricia M. Gantt (Utah State Univ. Press, 2006). I also searched for my photographs from my visit to her archives at Washington University, St. Louis, and I found my 2022 blog post about it.

Believe me, I have come very close to contacting CRI and screaming, “I can’t do it!” But, in calmer moments, I think it will be a good distraction from all else that’s going on in my life. Show up, Bethany, it’s only 4 weeks, 8 hours total. Read some poems together, talk about the poems. Talk about Swenson’s creative life and ideas and how far the tendrils of her influence have reached. Easy-peasy.

Of course we will read “Question” and “Centaur,” also “Bleeding” and more of Swenson’s iconographs. Here is a simpler, less well-known poem that, for me, shows off Swenson’s signature attention to our glorious and endangered natural world.

Shu Swamp, Spring

Young skunk
cabbages all over
the swamp.

Brownish purple,
yellow-speckled
short tusks,

they thicken,
twirl and point
like thumbs.

Thumbs of old
gloves, the nails
poked through

and curled.
By Easter, fingers
will have flipped out

fat and green.
Old gloves, brown
underground,

the seams split.
The nails
have been growing.

—May Swenson

Before I go, I really MUST tell you that I have an essay in the new edition of Tendon, published by the Johns Hopkins Center for Medical Humanities and Social Medicine. This link will take you to the home-page for the issue, and an intro to its theme of rest. If you scroll down you’ll find the table of contents and a link to my essay, “My Mother’s Work.”

As always, thanks for reading. And I hope you write.

Bethany