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Wayne's College of Beauty
Creating a collection of this
caliber is a stunning achievement. These are mature,
meticulously composed, radiant works, the kind written by a poet
in complete control of his craft. When a writer has paid dues
long enough to be blessed to such a degree by the muses, it
shows.
— The Kansas City Star
Wayne’s
College of Beauty evokes neighborhoods and well-traveled paths. I was
much impressed by the way music and metaphor fueled the narrative thread.
The poet’s strong sense of voice climbs above the resin of form. The cadence
evokes imagery without losing the balance of sentiment and sentimentality.
These poems are both hard-edged and beautiful, an exciting collection. —
Colleen J. McElroy
Although David Swanger does not flinch
from the large forces that daily battle us—flood, fire, war, old age,
illness, menace, death, "asteroids advancing toward earth"—or hesitate to
venture "into the deep deep dark," his is primarily a poetry of praise,
populated first and foremost by beauty and kindness, affection and
acceptance, generosity and celebration. Whether witnessing the sting of a
father fielding grounders of loss from his young son, or a husband patiently
watching his new wife go off with another man to "test- / drive their
liaison," or "the astonishing flash of pain" that was, and always will be,
9/11, these eloquent and consoling poems touch us, like the students at
Wayne’s College of Beauty, "not cruelly/ and with more than [their] hands."
Like the patrons of Wayne’s, when you come to this book, where "beauty is
not so hard," where "the idea is to sing,/ very beautifully, a little
longer," you "have come at last to the right place."
—
Ronald Wallace
Wayne’s College of Beauty is remarkable for its balance of emotion
and imagination. The control of language gives us an original and distilled
imagery, and that in turn leads us not simply to the well made surface of
the poem as we see in much recent poetry but instead takes us into the deep
and measured freight of emotion. Swanger writes with great empathy and
compassion for family and friends facing crisis and mortality, and often,
the discrete vistas of his imagination render a metaphysical resolution that
is at once anchored and luminous in the world. Whether his subjects are
animate or inanimate, Swanger’s voice is credible and compelling, and poem
after poem lifts off on its own good wings.
— Christopher Buckley
Perhaps we can ask no more of
Wayne’s College of Beauty
than that it end with one of the greatest poems of the past quarter-century,
"What the Wing Says." But David Swanger’s long-percolated collection does
offer more, including a number of other re-markable poems—"Longer," "Style,"
and "Spring School" among them—that will permanently inhabit any reader
fortunate enough to make a first encounter. Swanger is at once "the prophet
of less," the mind that "cannot get enough of the world" and is "made to
marvel / at the durability of newness," and the poet who recognizes, deeply,
that not even pain or cruelty can dampen his belief that against all odds
and logic "the idea is to sing, / very beautifully, a little longer . . ."
— Stephen Corey
David Swanger lives in Santa Cruz, California, with his wife, Lynn. His
awards include an NEA fellowship in poetry and the Foley Award from America
magazine. He is the author of four previous book-length poetry collections,
two chapbooks, and two nonfiction books. He holds degrees from Swarthmore
College and Harvard University.
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