THE KEY TO EVERYTHING

A poet’s private thoughts.

Literary scholar Brucia draws on diaries, correspondence, and autobiographical writings by May Swenson (1913-1989) to afford an intimate look at the poet’s life, focused especially on her early career, from the age of 22 to 46. Swenson was born in Utah, the first child in what grew to be a large Mormon family. As an adolescent, she began questioning her faith, and at Utah State Agricultural College, she rebelled by smoking, using profanity, and embracing her lesbian identity. Throughout her life, though, she maintained loving ties to her parents and siblings. Swenson arrived in New York in 1936, with little money but a passionate desire to succeed as a poet. Brucia traces the “resilience and instinct for survival” that saw her through hard times as she subsisted on low-paying secretarial jobs; landed in cheap rentals; lost her virginity to one of her employers; shoplifted clothing; and had affairs with men and women. In 1938, she was hired by the Federal Writers’ Project, assigned to the Living Lore Unit tasked with collecting first-person narratives. In the course of her work, she met Anca Vrbovska and fell in love. In Swenson’s words, they were “as committed to each other as a married couple”—until she couldn’t abide Anca’s tantrums and “dictatorship.” Championed by poet Alfred Kreymborg and publisher James Laughlin, Swenson was invited to the writers’ retreats of Yaddo and MacDowell, and her work began to appear in magazines, including the New Yorker. Her first book of poetry was published in 1954, news that she happily shared with her friend Elizabeth Bishop. Many books and prestigious awards followed, even as her health declined. Quoting extensively from Swenson’s writings, Brucia allows the poet’s voice to clearly emerge.

A perceptive, sympathetic biography.