SOURCE: "May Swenson: A Memorial Tribute," in Gettysburg Review, Vol. 5, No. 1, Winter, 1992, pp. 81-5.

In the following essay, Wilbur commemorates Swenson's contributions to poetry, providing an overview of her life and career.

May Swenson was not much given to self-absorption or self-portraiture, but in one of her later poems we find her looking at herself and seeing the lineaments of her mother and father. "I look at my hand," she says—

      I look at my hand and see
         it is also his and hers;
     the pads of the fingers his,
 
              the wrists and knuckles hers.
               In the mirror my pugnacious eye
                     and ear of an elf, his;
 
                               my tamer mouth and slant
                                       cheekbones hers.

That gives us a glimpse of May Swenson, though I should like to qualify it; she did indeed inherit a brow and set of eyes which were capable of pugnacity, but what I mostly...