"The poems roam adventurously through nature, a hike undertaken by someone who dares dive into streams, delve into the minds of crows, scamper up tree trunks, or edge daringly close to the sun. The poems are and are not about relationships-Swensen leaves room for the reader to choose which scenario to perceive. Throughout, they demonstrate her crisp sense of humor and sparse, evocative writing style."
"Born and raised near San Francisco, a longtime professor at Brown before her recent retirement, and a 2006 Guggenheim Fellow, Swensen has long been a fixture of the poetry scene. In anticipation of her Mon/18 conversation with fellow poet Norma Cole at City Lights-and because she was traveling by train in Germany and phone connections were iffy-she graciously answered some questions over email."
"I'm not sure that I can draw any specific connections, but I was an avid reader as a child, and my mother was a painter, so I grew up in a house in which the arts were a normal part of everyday life. I never questioned whether being a poet was practical or reasonable; I just wrote poems and greatly enjoyed it, so kept on doing it. I began writing when I was about 11, and it was always poetry, though I don't know why, as most of what I read were novels."
"I was at Santa Cruz for my PhD, so I was deeply engaged in critical writing. While I'd done a lot during my undergraduate and master's degrees, the PhD required a deeper commitment to both critical writing and critical theory, which I greatly enjoyed. I did worry when I started the program that it might nudge the poetry out of my life, that I just wouldn"
The book is organized into three parts, Tic, Tac, and Tao. Poems move through nature with adventurous scenes such as hiking into streams, entering the minds of crows, climbing tree trunks, and approaching the sun. The poems relate to relationships in ways that remain ambiguous, allowing readers to decide how to interpret situations. The writing uses a crisp sense of humor and sparse, evocative language. Cole Swensen grew up near San Francisco, with a painter mother and an everyday arts environment. She began writing poems around age eleven. She later pursued a PhD at Santa Cruz, engaging deeply in critical writing and critical theory while enjoying the intellectual commitment and worrying it might displace poetry.
Read at 48 hills
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]