Cole Swensen, VEER

is a former sun, a warmer form of falling on, fallen now, warmly in grass, while the sun in your hand is a lonelier one, so you hold it more closely, and a light deep inside your body wanders back. (“AN ORANGE”)

The latest from American poet and translator Cole Swensen is the collection VEER (New Gloucester ME: Alice James Books, 2026), a collection seemingly produced as the first volume in “The Jean Valentine Series” at Alice James Books, named for the late American poet who died in December, 2020. As the back of the collection offers: “Established in Valentine’s name, the series celebrates women-identifying poets in mid- to late-career whose work embodies the qualities that defined her own: risk-taking in form and vision, emotional and intellectual daring, and a commitment to language that illuminates and lingers. It honors poets who surprise us, who move us, who open new pathways in poetry. In doing so, the series affirms Valentine’s belief that poetry can be a site of profound listening—an invitation to encounter what is fragile, strange, or holy in the world an in ourselves.” Swensen is, of course, the author of some twenty collections of poetry, the last two decades alone seeing the publication of poetry titles Ours: poems on the gardens of Andre Le Notre (University of California Press, 2008) [see my review of such here], greensward (Brooklyn NY: Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010) [see my review of such here], Gravesend (University of California Press, 2012) [see my review of such here], Stele (Sausalito CA: The Post-Apollo Press, 2012) [see my review of such here], LANDSCAPES ON A TRAIN (New York NY: Nightboat Books, 2015) [see my review of such here], Gave (Omnidawn, 2017) [see my review of such here], On Walking On (Nightboat Books, 2017) [see my review of such here], Art In Time (Nightboat Books, 2021) [see my review of such here] and And And And (Free Poetry Press, 2022; Shearsman, 2022) [see my review of such here].

Composed across three sections—“TIC,” “TAC” and “TAO”—VEER is a collection of delicately precise prose poems and prose poem sequences that intersperse writing on trees, flowers, oranges, sunlight, sand, egrets, words, story problems, sailboats and crows. Lyric and meditative, the clarity and ease of her lines are composed with a kind of hush: “How time / wanes when the mind strays.” There’s such quiet and fierce intelligence across these poems, as Swensen moves through perception and mapping, turns and sudden turns, offering a new variation on her detailed explorations across landscapes, including gardens, paintings and graveyards. Her work explores ways of seeing and detailed attending, connecting a constellation of minutae. “And then there’s the reflection caught in passing a shopwindow,” she writes, as the second part of the three-part sequence “REFLECTIONS,” “as if the window itself were passing, as if a window is always / something moving past you. What I mean to say is that I was / moved by what I saw on the surface of the window, and that as / I passed it, someone passing right behind me seemed, for just a / second, to be alive inside me.” It is as though Swensen attends a specific detail in depth, so as to better comprehend that bigger picture.

BARE TREES

The structure of trees outlined against sky—their countless extensions all caressing its starkness—it’s November, which lets us see that the trees are actually tracing all the world’s thought-paths throughout the atmosphere—we can only follow them to the ends of their twigs, but they go on in filaments too fine for our eyes and, in fact, extend to the farthest edges of the universe, expanding with it.

 

two new chapbooks, the uAlberta writer-in-residence (online) showcase, an interview + an above/ground press (zoom) conversation,

So, ryan fitzpatrick interviewed me across those early days of the pandemic, a selection of such is now available online via his MODEL Press as a free pdf download (check out further titles here, of course), in case such intrigues. As well, I've two recent chapbooks through above/ground press: an excerpt of my work-in-progress poetry manuscript, Origin Stories, in which I responded across 2025 to Benjamin Niespodziany's weekly "Sunday poem + prompt" substack, and an excerpt of "the green notebook," a prose writing and reading journal composed across a full calendar year (a number of which I'd been posting-as-excerpts across my substack). Watch, also, as I've got forthcoming chapbooks through Broke Press and Subpress, which is pretty cool.

I'm doing two online events over the next little bit. This Friday evening I'm part of the online Writer-in-Residence 50th Anniversary Alumni Showcase (well, online unless you are in Banff, Alberta): May 15, 2026 7:00 PM - 10:00 PM, Clvb 33, St. Julien Way, Banff, AB and online. REGISTER HERE. "The Writer-in-Residence program in the Department of English and Film Studies is delighted to invite you to attend our 50th anniversary Writer-in-Residence Alumni Showcase at the Banff Centre's Clvb 33. All are welcome to attend either in person or virtually. There will be readings from Thomas Wharton, Fred Wah, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Cody Caetano, JR Carpenter, rob mclennan, Daphne Marlatt, Jana Pruden, Hiromi Goto, and Marilyn Dumont." 

A week or so later, American poet and translator Cole Swensen will be interviewing myself, Jennifer Baker and Misha Solomon as part of "Publishing in-Transit: above/ground press," a whole conversation on and around above/ground through Brooklyn Rail. Wednesday, May 20, 2026 1pm Eastern/10am Pacific, via Zoom. REGISTER HERE. Oh, what an exciting week or so of things!

Cole Swensen, Art In Time

 

These artists—again, intentionally or not—have engaged the landscape genre in a fluid way, a way that puts the landscape back into motion, and in doing so, they have found alternatives to some of the presumptions and practices of landscape art common to Euro-centric contexts, such as the use of linear perspective, in which the proper viewing position can only be occupied by one person at a time, thus implicitly supporting hierarchical social and political systems and the regimes of appropriation, colonization, and exclusion that go along with them.

A substantial body of western landscape theory written over the past thirty+ years has critiqued the genre’s reinforcement of binaries such as inside/outside, subject/object, and culture/nature. Such binaries are part of the ideological approach through which landscape art can reduce a complex network of animal, vegetal, and mineral interactions to a static ornament, reinforcing a sense of human power over “nature,” imposing specific cultural values, and/or claiming or exercising control. Such a stance projects human interests and desires so thoroughly that they effectively anthropomorphize the world, subjugating its non-human elements to humans’ will to turn the world to our uses and/or reflect our domination of (and imagined separation from) the “natural” world.

And yet, throughout the centuries, various artists have taken quite different approaches, implicitly or explicitly advocating relationships with the earth based on collaboration rather than domination, conversation rather than control. Achieved through variations on conventional depictions of the world around them, such works, rather than standing back and looking at that world, instead participate in it, thus keeping something of the vital motion of the moment intact.

That motion is not only spatial, but also temporal, in the process of presenting space in dynamic flow, these works also acknowledge the fluidity of time. They are not interested in being “timeless,” an epithet often applied to works marked by a distilled quality that they’ve only achieved at the expense of remaining disengaged from their own moment; instead, these works insist on specificity, on particularity; in short, they advocate an art in time, inn all the possible meanings of that term—an art conjugated into the present, and in time to do something about that present. If art is the verb in the grammar of culture, it’s those works of art in the active tenses that have the most potential to play a role in keeping that culture responsive to its immediate demands and needs. (“Introduction: An Argument Against Timeless Art”)

New from American poet and translator Cole Swensen is Art In Time (New York NY: Nightboat Books, 2021), the latest in more than a dozen poetry titles she’s released over the years: It’s Alive She Says (Floating Island Press, 1984), New Math (William Morrow & Co., 1988), Park (Floating Island Press, 1991), Numen (Burning Deck Press, 1995), Noon (Sun & Moon Press, 1997), Try (University of Iowa Press, 1999), Oh (Apogee Press, 2000), Such Rich Hour (University of Iowa Press, 2001), Goest (Alice James Books, 2004), The Book of a Hundred Hands (University of Iowa Press, 2005) [see my review of such here], The Glass Age (Alice James Books, 2007), Ours: poems on the gardens of Andre Le Notre (University of California Press, 2008) [see my review of such here], greensward (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010) [see my review of such here], Gravesend (University of California Press, 2012) [see my review of such here], Stele (Sausalito CA: The Post-Apollo Press, 2012) [see my review of such here], LANDSCAPES ON A TRAIN (Nightboat Books, 2015) [see my review of such here], Gave (Omnidawn, 2017) [see my review of such here] and On Walking On (Nightboat Books, 2017) [see my review of such here].

Art In Time is made up of twenty sequences of lyric prose composed as essay-poems, each of which examines a particular artist’s work, including “Willem de Kooning: Composed Windows,” “Sally Mann: Untitled Ground,” “Henry Ossawa Tanner: Night Over Night,” “Renee Gladman: Acsemic Cities,” “Gustav Klimt: Seventeen Summers” and “David Hockney: The Four Seasons.” Her essay-poems exist as a blend of research, commentary and critique around a field or fields of movement by her chosen artist, and on their chosen work or works. “We’re considering only the late works because it’s only in them / that night gets built of light,” she writes, to open “Henry Ossawa Tanner: Night Over Night,” “letting contradiction lock into place as / the principal engine of Tanner’s oeuvre.” As Swensen describes through her introduction, the pieces in Art In Time exist as an extended essay on depictions of and approaches toward landscape through visual art, layered through individual “chapters” around individual artists. “Landscape with Person or The White Road,” she writes, as part of the sequence “Chaïm Soutine: Reeling Trees,” “1918-1919 / We’re falling up a hill—still as the light shines through— / climbing branches that hold a house up to the sky // as the road divides—as the cliff falls— / as the sky falls—as the road flays // and the world tilts red where it isn’t / walking along a road thrown farther up // as we pick our way down the red cliff / running in the sun.”

Her poetry titles over the past twenty years have become increasingly project and research-based, as studies on landscapes and the human structures set upon nature, whether elements of time, painting or medieval French gardens, exploring the human capacity to arrange presumptions of order upon the untamed wild, as well as what and how exactly gets depicted. As she discussed her then-recent array of book-length poetry projects in a now-disappeared interview conducted a few years ago by Andy Fitch for The Conversant: “They revolve around separate topics, yet address the same social questions: How do we constitute our view of the world (which, of course, in turn constitutes that world), and how does the world thus constituted impinge upon others?” As she discusses four 9-screen video installations by British artist David Hockney towards the end of “David Hockney: The Four Seasons, Woldgate Woods”:

And though throughout the series, we’re constantly moving, we will clearly never arrive, but continue to shift in relation to the relative proportions of road and trees. Chinese aesthetic theory had rejected the idea of a vanishing point by the eleventh century because it meant that you—the viewer—weren’t there. you weren’t moving. If you’re not moving, in a way, you’re dead.

This is a fascinating study on how both artist and viewer potentially enter the space of a depicted landscape, through a book that, hopefully, is critiqued at some point by someone better versed in the history and study of visual art. I’m fascinated by these essay-poems, and how she moves across entire lengths of geography, styles and history in her list of artist subjects; fascinated by how her essay-poems ebb and flow through biographical detail, intricate critique and broad, sweeping strokes that highlight even the smallest details. “He worked slowly,” she writes, to close “Gustav Klimt: Seventeen Summers” (a piece that appeared in an earlier form as a chapbook through above/ground press), “meticulously rising before anyone else into the / empty house, into the summer that far north in which the question / of morning is increasingly simply a tone on a pallet, a gravel path / from which you could see the foothills of the Alps. A gravel path / up which no one is walking. There are never any people in Klimt’s / landscapes, no animals, and so we must concede that it must be / the landscape itself that is moving.” Swensen writes of how each artist’s work allows the viewer to enter into the landscape, writing out how one is simultaneously part of and separate from the landscape, and the effects it has on the viewer, the view and on the art itself. “Renee Gladman’s drawings could be anything,” Swensen writes, as part of Gladman’s section, “but they happen / to be cities.” Or, as she writes as part of “Rosa Bonheur: Animals with Landscape,” focusing on the painter and sculptor Rosa Bonheur (1822-1899):

She lived an independent life, insisting on it, never married, wore trousers—which required the permission of the police at the time—and traveled widely, bringing a wealth of images back from her trips:

Morning fog and up through fog, the way things come up through fog, somehow seeming closer as they grow yet more faint. They retain the ghostly—you can see the ghost inside them, a morning in Scotland, several cows, but because of the fog, they can’t settle into a finite number. Became Morning in the Highlands, 1857.

And another, a lake across which the cattle swam on their way to the annual market at Falkirk, some of them, almost drowning, held above the water’s surface by their horns by men rowing alongside them in boats. Became The Boat, 1856.

And later, on the same trip, another lake singing in the dark, across a lake around a lake, the way the dark makes the walk, and farther on, we hear (Nathalie writing to her mother) It was the only time I ever heard her sing.

1850: in the Pyrenees, admiring the grandiose savagery of the mountains from the back of a horse that she and Nathalie shared in order to cut the cost. You have no idea how hard it was not to bring back a sheep and a goat. On a later trip, 1853, they did bring back an otter, who often snuck into the house and joined Henriette in bed.

 

London (and Oxford) calling,

I can’t even rememeber what we did prior to this. Do you remember? The first leg of our trip, in the Scottish Highlands, before arriving here [see my post on such here]. We are starting to miss our wee children, of course. Nine days away from them is quite a lot.

Saturday, Sept 29

The overnight sleeper train from Inverness, Scotland to London, England: the tiniest of wee cabins, apparently the end of the last trains, before the new ones come in. Upon arriving, we settled, resettled, and made for the lounge, where we read for a bit, and I had whisky again (this is becoming a habit). We read for a bit, and then returned to our closet, for the sake of some sleep.

Some twelve hours and five hundred miles later, neither Christine nor I managed much. Train lurched, sped, stopped, chugged and all of the above. 7am, the attendant rapped upon our closet door, and handed us the bacon wraps we ordered, as well as coffee, which was, simply, cups of boiled water with instant coffee pouches. Um, what? How dare you, sir.

This insult far worse than Culloden. Well, maybe not.

We chugged along, made the station sometime after 8am, where we rolled out into the street and into an awaiting cab, where our overweighted bags were put into another closet (elevator) that could barely contain, and a matchbook room big enough for perhaps a bed and the two of us.

Christine headed a couple of blocks away to the British Library (as we were right by King’s Cross), and I headed to the tube, for the sake of the Tate Modern. I made the proper station, but managed to either mishear or misunderstand directions, taking some forty minutes to find my way from the Tower Bridge tube stop to the museum. At least it was free.

And some of the things I saw along the way were pretty cool. I'll give you that, getting-lost.

Although I came here to see David Hockneys (a perpetual favourite of mine, whom I see as the British equivalent to Canadian Greg Curnoe), which there were none. The Tate Britain, they said. But they were here when I came through before… “I came all this way to see the David Hockneys, and all I saw were these lousy postcards.”(This is the same painting I have the oversized poster of, collected the prior time I came through Tate Modern, with Stephen Brockwell, in what, 2006?).

Forty enjoyable minutes in the museum, some gift shopping of various sorts, and I was off again, walking far too much and training more than I should have (some trains were off, out, shifted). I wandered a bit, including a walk over London Bridge, but managed to miss the tube stations and kept walking, walking, walking. And when I did discover one, my route kept including trains that had shut down. In all, I was three hours out of our hotel room, and only forty minutes in the museum; the rest in transit.

On the way back from the Tate, a man playing a tuba that burped fire. One really can't make such things up.

I saw one of these in Philly also

At the Tate, I did pick up a couple more books, including some for a pound (two for three): Kathy Acker, New York City in 1979; Andy Warhol, FAME; Italo Calvino, The Distance of the Moon. I am curious. Also, a very neat memoir by artist Jean Frémon, Now, Now, Louison (LesFugitives). A memoir composed of lyric fragments, I did finally pick it up for the Siri Hustvedt quote on the cover (given I’d not actually heard of the artist), only to discover hours later it was translated into English by Cole Swensen. Hey, I know her! (I’m publishing a chapbook by her, basically as soon as the rights for the cover photograph clear)

Once back at the hotel, a shower, computer. This. Before retiring to the pub next door, to await Christine, only to discover that The Water Rats (built over a prior club) is known for being the first location of London and/or UK gigs by various musicians, including Bob Dylan, The Pogues, Oasis and Katy Perry. Photographs stretching the wall. Reading for a bit, including finishing Stephen Collis’ new book on Phyllis Webb (I should write up my notes for a review, then).

Once she arrived, we headed west, taking one of the tube lines to the end, before taking a bus to spend time with one of her former teachers at West Dean, Mark Cockram (who has, as he pointed out later, a perfect palindrome name). When we arrived, he showed us an experiment he was conducting with a particular glue (which was far more interesting than I am describing here). I could tell that Christine was jealous of his entire set-up. Oh yes. I think we might have to build her a studio in the backyard, at some point. Or something.

Drinks in the pub, round upon round. They talked about other bookbinders, other programs, other things. Gossip. About that time we drove to near-Peterborough for Christine to interview design bookbinder Michael Wilcox. Writing. Various things. The fact that Mark (as Christine inquired upon) has done some of the binding for the Man Booker Prize (!!!).

He had originally invited a friend of his, a poetry person from BBC Radio to join us, but his friend could not. His friend, also (he claimed), recently credited as the original writer of the Beatles film Yellow Submarine. Um, what? (I saw that movie some thirty times before I was nineteen).

At one point, as Christine had wandered off to the washroom, Mark turned to me and said, I hope you know how lucky you.. no, wait. I think you do.

Sunday, Sept 30

Is it Sunday already? The first morning we could actually sleep in, so we did. No early morning this, or that (which was good, considering the night prior). We wandered over to Oxford Street to collect a few things, attempt some shops. Christine, mainly. I remained at the pub where we lunched and worked quietly (she picked up a very nice coat, among other items), before we returned to the hotel to prepare for our evening event.

The reading was organized and hosted by Russell Bennetts and Shuwei Fang, those of the Queen Mob's Teahouse, as a "teaparty," at the Primrose Hill Community Library, Camden Town. Readings were scheduled by Adham Smart, Calliope Michail, Russell Bennetts, Cathy Dreyer, Steven J. Fowler, Anthony Etherin, Christine McNair and myself. We met up for food/drink some two hours prior with Anthony and his wife/co-editor/publisher/collaborator Clara Daneri, both of whom we thought quite charming and delightful.

Walking out of the pub with Clara and Anthony, we saw Russell and Shuwei, who walked over with us, but said, hey, do you want to see the Sylvia Plath plaque? Um, yes! Less than a few doors away, where she lived in the early 1960s.

Unfortunately, Cathy Dreyer couldn't make the event, but I was very taken with the readings, opening with a small open set. While there was a mix, there weren't necessarily low points. I liked what Adham was doing with his poems, and Calliope was launching a debut chapbook that had some interesting moments to it. SJ Fowler's work was quite striking, and I was able to exchange books with both Calliope and Mr. Fowler, which was quite glorious. Apparently Adham has a debut forthcoming (but I've managed to forget with whom).

I think the reading went quite well! My pal Ian Jempsen (formerly of Ottawa, but long now in London) and his lovely wife made the event, which I appreciated very much! Given Ian isn't really a poetry person, and I only see him (now) once a decade or so. I was selling copies of my Spuyten Duyvil title (I actually managed to sell a couple), but handing out everything else, including the chapbook I specifically produced for the entire trip, my brand-new Study of a fox. I left mounds of these, as well as a variety of issues of Touch the Donkey.

My foot was bothering me, so I wasn't moving as quickly as I might have preferred, with a flare-up of my gout (I'd been noticing this a day or so already; I don't usually drink beer at home, so I suspect this dietary shift is causing me problems). Anthony and I traded gout stories. He told us how, thanks to Christian, he met Penn Jillette (and Penn even bought him lunch a while back).

But of course, post-event, we retired to the pub. Everyone, eventually, drifted off. Did I mention how delightful we found Clara and Anthony? Christine, Clara, Anthony and I closed the place, before attempting (finally, finally, finally) a cab to our respective hotels.

Monday, Oct 1

Another quiet day, I suppose. Christine left early, to attempt her work-conference in Oxford, which meant heading over to Paddington tube station for the sake of an hour-long train. She was attempting to make conference registration for 8am or 8:30am, but the train was late. Still, she made it, although she missed some of the day's initial activities. I woke around 9am, puttered about the hotel room, packing. Once downstairs, I caught the last of the breakfast and sat in the lobby/lounge and worked for a couple of hours (finishing and posting my review of Stephen Collis' book on Phyllis Webb).

My gout quite bad, I can barely move, the joint of my big toe is extremely swollen. Still, I hobbled to post office for stamps and postcard-mailing, hobbled to a bookstore (that didn't have what I think I was looking for) and to the tube, to repeat Christine's route: Paddington to the train, over to Oxford. On the hour-long train to Oxford, going through Kathy Fish's debut collection of stories, Together We Can Bury It (The Lit Hub, 2013), a book I specifically ordered weeks back for the sake of this trip. I'd been noticing her 'flash fiction' for a while now, and had been curious, and am now quite impressed with the strength of this collection. Although, given how strong this book is, I'm wondering when the next might appear?

Once settled into our room (hobbling over to cab, and then to our hotel, which once was a parsonage), I alternated between email, postcards, writing and sleep before Christine came through, a couple of hours later. We were both exhausted. We went down for tea and a bite to eat (the hotel is lovely; the early 20th century artwork on the walls is staggering) before crashing in our room to a couple of hours of Top Gear (oh, British television, have you nothing else?). We crashed, hard.

Tomorrow: more of Christine's conference, before a return to London...