SOURCE: "May Swenson," in Tri-Quarterly, No. 7, Fall, 1966, pp. 119-31.

Howard is an American poet, critic, and translator who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1970 for his poetry collection Untitled Subjects (1969). In the following essay, he traces the poetic style evinced in Swenson's verse, finding it magical and incantatory.

A harsh assessment of Swenson:

May Swenson begins and ends in mannerism. She is forever tinkering, taking apart a cat, a watch, a poem. Without evident embarrassment she can tell us (in "The Watch") that the watchmaker "… leaned like an ogre over my / naked watch. With critical pincers he / poked and stirred. He / lifted out little private things with a magnet too tiny for me / to watch almost. 'Watch out!' I / almost said …" I'm not just sure what kind of good fun this is. She is endlessly feeling things and relentlessly fashionable about what there is to grab….

For May...