Coming soon from Princeton University Press
A Biography of May Swenson bringing to light, for the first time, the existence of poet May Swenson’s personal diaries that have never been made available to the public. Through the author’s careful piecing together of some 50 years of the poet’s private life, we see a young and previously unknown May—mordantly sarcastic, wickedly funny, intensely introspective, and fiercely independent. May voices her anxieties and aspirations as she experiments with her sexuality, extricates herself from a sheltered Mormon upbringing and forges a new life in New York City, a woman alone at the height of the depression.
In this in-depth biography, readers will see exactly why the indefinable Swenson and her lively, iconic work still resist being pinned down.