May Swenson: Poems to Solve

May Swenson put together the collection of poems, titled Poems to Solve, with the intention of making her readers work for their meanings. In a letter at the beginning she says that "A characteristic of all poetry, in fact, is that more is hidden in it than in prose" (Swenson 1). One strategy of making meaning in poetry "hidden" is defamiliarization, which she uses a bit of. She'll talk about something, like an egg for breakfast, and never say its name, so we must just assume that's what she's describing. The topics of the poems do not relate; it is a collection of poetry, instead, for each poem's individuality.
In terms of format, I'm reminded by some of her poems of the book of poetry called Nets by Jen Bervin that we looked at last class, not because they are poems made from pieces of previously published poetry, but because the layout of some are unique and interesting. One in particular that I found exciting is entitled Feel Like a Bird. The words that are important or indicators are capitalized and set apart from the rest. I would love to have had the chance to hear Swenson read this poem because there are several options for how to do it and each is interesting. Others have a very straightforward layout, with even stanzas. For the most part, the lines are relatively short and end-stopped. I enjoy this book of Swenson's poetry because instead of attempting to rhyme each line or set up a rhyme scheme, she focuses on saying exactly what she wants to say. The poems are mostly short, about a page or two, and focused. They are not predictable, but distinctive.
The vocabulary that she chooses, while understandable and not too challenging, is interesting and flows nicely. There is one poem in which she uses scientific vocabulary to serve her purpose of describing a familiar object in an unfamiliar way. As a result of the vocabulary and shorter lines, the tone is one of intellectual superiority, but not in a condescending way. It's hard to explain, but I get the feeling that Swenson is trying to share something very precious with us, but understands that it's not straightforward and so she must spell it out for us.
A young poet might aspire to be as talented as Swenson, but because of her constantly changing layout and complicated defamiliarizations, it would serve this young poet best to pick out certain techniques that are used and work up slowly.