Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Key to Everything: May Swenson, a Writer's Life

The Key to Everything: May Swenson, a Writer's Life

Brucia, Margaret a.

Hardcover

Biographies GeneralLiterary FiguresGeneral Poetry

Publisher Price: $29.95

ISBN10: 0691247234
ISBN13: 9780691247236
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: Jul 8 2025
Pages: 288
Weight: 1.30
Height: 1.00 Width: 6.40 Depth: 9.10
Language: English

An intimate portrait of the twentieth-century American poet

May Swenson (1913-1989) was one of the most important and original poets of the twentieth century. The Key to Everything is a biography of this experimental American modernist that draws directly from her unpublished diaries and her letters to friends, family, and colleagues, most notably Elizabeth Bishop. In 1952, Swenson wrote in her diary, I want to confirm my life in a narrative--my Lesbianism, the hereditary background of my parents, grandparents, origins in the 'old country.' Taking up Swenson's uncompleted autobiographical plan, Margaret Brucia tells Swenson's story as much as possible through her own words.

While chronicling the whole of Swenson's life, this book focuses on the period from 1936 to 1959, when she came of age artistically and personally in New York City. Against the backdrop of the Great Depression, the Federal Writers' Project, Greenwich Village, and the emergence of gay culture, Swenson's diaries lay bare her aspirations, fears, joys, and disappointments. Readers see the poet and person emerge, inextricably entwined, as Swenson describes her struggles with poverty, anonymity, and predatory men; her romantic relationships; and the people she met, the books she read, and the work she produced.

The most detailed and intimate biography of Swenson to date, The Key to Everything is a unique portrait of a poet who resisted labels throughout her life.

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