May Swenson
American poet (1913–1989)
Anna Thilda 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.
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. 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
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 Greensboro, the University of California, Riverside, Purdue University, and Utah State University. From 1959 to 1966 she worked as a manuscript reviewer at New Directions Publishing.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1026443. VIAF identifies the subject as 37043756. The Library of Congress control number is n50011616. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1913, 1989, 1970 and 1934.
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This entry incorporates text from “May Swenson” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.