lines that wanted none. “When experiencing the full reality of something alive,
one does not, to begin with, say its name”—good advice, dodging the mythic
gift of naming to get a fresh sense of things. Just so, Dickinson’s “A Route of
Evanescence” presents “a revolving Wheel— / A Resonance of Emerald” (that
turns out a hummingbird).
“When experiencing the full reality of something alive, one does not, to be-
gin with, say its name.” Swenson adopted an ancient form to catch that reality:
Riddles. Anglo-Saxons made them for storm, fire, iceberg, barnacle goose. She
called her first one “By Morning,” wakening eye and ear:
Some for everyone
plenty
and more coming
Fresh dainty airily arriving
everywhere at once...
Each building will be a hill
all sharps made round...
Streets will be fields
cars be fumbling sheep...
By morning we ’ll be children
feeding on manna
a new loaf on every doorsillTheNew Yorker, to her distress, preferred to call this “Snow by Morning.” It
was her first appearance there, so she agreed, but switched back when the poem
appeared in a book. Discovering reality within appearances fascinated her, as
did our outward senses. All this a poem can capture, through inventive rhythm,
shape, sound, wording, imagery, tone of voice, and surprise.
And all this happens in another kind of poem she favored: “shaped,” “fig-
ured,” or “concrete.” She called hers “iconographs,” graphic pictures. George
Herbert, Shakespeare ’s contemporary, shaped the lines of poems into angel’s
wings or an altar. “A poem should not mean / But be,” Archibald MacLeish once
said, but the truest poems do both. In “How Everything Happens,” Swenson’s
lines mimic the rise and fall of wave action. “I wanted to make my poems do
what they say.” Don’t just talk the talk—walk the walk! It ’s our proof for the
ideal oneness of that pesky dualism, form and content.
“Unconscious Came a Beauty,” Swenson’s finest iconograph, at once shows
and tells something vital. Simply hearing this poem, with slight pauses at each
line break, would alter us for good, and seeing does more. Our mind takes in
the nameless reality of something alighting, while seeing what “it” must be.
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