2025, Princeton University Press

By Margaret A. Brucia

The Key to Everything 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.

PRAISE

“Brucia’s vibrant portrait, set against the mercurial backdrop of mid-century Manhattan, draws on Swenson’s diaries and her extensive correspondence with her fellow-poet Elizabeth Bishop to examine Swenson’s work with the Federal Writers’ Project; her romantic relationships, most of which involved women; and her cultivation of the playful, experimental literary style that would define her career.”—New Yorker

“A laudable work that relies on Swenson’s extensive diaries and letters to give the book a personal, intimate feel. It represents the first true biography of a woman who—through her experimentation with form (particularly the use of ‘shape’ poems), her propensity to write cerebral, often whimsical verse, and her willingness to explore, especially in her latter work, her lesbian sexuality—fashioned her own unique contribution to modern poetry.”—Paul Alexander, Washington Post

“This biography will remain the gold standard for many years in Swenson studies.”—Matthew Stevenson, CounterPunch

“Quoting extensively from Swenson’s writings, Brucia allows the poet’s voice to clearly emerge. . . . A perceptive, sympathetic biography.”—Kirkus Reviews