Volume 1, Number 2 · June 1, 1963
Recent Poetry
By Anthony Hecht
To Mix With Time
by May Swenson
Scribner, $3.50
Final Solutions
by Frederick Seidel
Random House, $3.75
One way of indicating the distinction and quality of May Swenson's poetry is to say that she deserves to be compared to Elizabeth Bishop. And indeed there are things in this book, which contains new poems together with selections from two previous volumes, that sound a note of indebtedness. Miss Swenson's 'The Totem,' for example, about the Empire State Building, may vaguely remind the reader of Miss Bishop's 'The Monument.' But if there are points of kinship, the differences are still important; and May Swenson has an idiom and voice of her own, both more playful and baroque than Miss Bishop's.
Review, 1516 words
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