May swenson biography
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May Swenson
I was born (May 28th, 1919) and raised in . English is my second language because in my home I
grew up speaking Swedish with my family. I went to school there all the way through college. I got my bachelor's
degree in 1939 at the .
Another Animal, the first book of my poems, was presented to the public in 1954. Soon after, in 1958, came
the book A Cage of Spines; then another in 1963, To Mix with Time New and Selected Poems. Quit a bit of my
poetry after that was directed towards the youth.
I published ten different collections of poetry and a book of translations of poems of Tomas Transtormer, a
Swedish poet. But I did a large variety of writing. I write on the natural world and some scientific research.
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May Swenson
American poet
Anna Thilda May "May" Swenson (May 28, 1913 – December 4, 1989) was an American poet and playwright. Harold Bloom considered her one of the most important and original poets of the 20th century.[1][2]
Born to Margaret and Dan Arthur Swenson, she was the eldest of 10 children in a Mormon household where Swedish was spoken regularly and English was a second language.[3] Although her conservative family struggled to accept that she was a lesbian, they remained close throughout her life. Much of her later poetry was devoted to children (e.g. the 1970 collection Iconographs). She also translated the work of contemporary Swedish poets, including the selected poems of Nobel laureate Tomas Tranströmer.
Personal life
[edit]Swenson attended Utah State University in Logan, Utah, graduating in 1934 with a bachelor's degree. She taught poetry as poet-in-residence at Bryn Mawr College, the University of North Carolina at Gr
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May Swenson (1913 - 1989)
Swenson's Career
Two years after graduating from Utah State Agricultural College (now Utah State University) as an English major with a minor in art, Swenson moved to New York City with the aim of making a life for herself as a poet. Life in New York was not easy for an aspiring but unknown poet during the closing years of the Great Depression. Swenson held numerous jobs and moved frequently in the first years of her residence in the city. She worked briefly for the Polish writer Anzia Yezierska, and from 1938 to 1939, she collected oral histories for the Living Lore Unit of the Federal Writers’ planerat arbete . Swenson’s job prospects gradually improved, which enabled her to pay for an apartment in Greenwich by, strengthen her ties with the New York artistic community, and devote more of her time to writing and circulating poems. After years of frustration and rejection, Swenson’s hard work paid off in 1949 when William Rose Benet accepted her poem “Hayma