Reading Swift S Poetry

This book explicates Jonathan Swift's poetry, reaffirming its prominence in competing literary traditions.

"Part way through his most famous self-elegy, Jonathan Swift coined one of the greatest one-line gags in poetry: 'what he writ was all his own'. The ostensibly proprietorial phrase was brazenly lifted from John Denham's On Mr Abraham Cowley: To him no Author was unknown, Yet what he wrote was all his own. Denham praises Cowley for writing original verse under the appropriate influence of prominent models old and new. In Swift's poem, more than half a century later, the venerable art of imitation (imitatio veterum) had been displaced by the dubious threat of theft (stealing hints). What does it mean to steal a hint? 'To steal another's idea is wrong', as James McLaverty says; but 'to take it and adapt it (as Swift does with the La Rochefoucauld maxim that stimulates the Verses or with Denham's couplet in these lines) is a vital aspect of invention'. A hint can be gifted and regifted among likeminded writers. Swift gave John Gay the idea for The Beggar's Opera, though the latter preferred 'to have my own Scheme and to treat it in my own way'"--

A sweeping achievement from a poet whose "rhythms are as alive to the roll and tang of syllables on the tongue as they are to the circulation of blood and sap" (Rosanna Warren, Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize citation). David Baker, acclaimed for his combination of “visionary scope” (Gettysburg Review) and “emotional intensity” (Georgia Review), is one of contemporary poetry’s most gifted lyric poets. In Swift, he gathers poems from eight collections, including his masterful latest, Scavenger Loop (2015); the prize-winning, intimate travelogues of Never-Ending Birds (2009); and the complications of history and home in Changeable Thunder (2001). Opening the volume are fifteen new poems that continue Baker’s growth in form and voice as he investigates the death of parents, the loss of homeland, and a widening natural history, not only of his beloved Midwest but of the tropical flora and fauna of a Caribbean island. Together, these poems showcase the evolution of Baker’s distinct eco-poetic conscience, his mastery of forms both erotic and elegiac, and his keen eye for the shifting landscapes of passion, heartbreak, and renewal. With equal curiosity and candor, Baker explores the many worlds we all inhabit—from our most intimate relationships to the wider social worlds of neighborhoods, villages, and our complex national identity, to the environmental community we all share. With his dazzling formal restlessness and lifelong devotion to landscapes both natural and human on full display, David Baker demonstrates why he has been called “the most expansive and moving poet to come out of the American Midwest since James Wright” (Marilyn Hacker).

This collection of Jonathan Swift’s poetry is separated in three parts, according to their subject matter. The first section are poems addressed to a woman named Stella. Based off a real-life close friend of Swift’s, Esther Johnson, the portion of poetry addressed to Stella contain beautiful tributes to this woman, with simple titles such as Stella’s Birthday March 13, 1727. Though these poems display a tender amount of intimacy shared between the two, Esther Johnson and Jonathan’s relationship is shrouded in mystery, leaving readers and historians to debate if they were just friends or something more romantic. The next section of The Poems of Jonathan Swift are dedicated to a woman called Vanessa, who was based off of one of Swift’s lovers, Esther Vanhomrigh. Their correspondence and his poems about her suggested a more romantic relationship than the one he shared with Stella. With elegant word choice and masterful form, both women and their relationships with Swift are well documented in this book of poems. The final part of The Poems of Jonathan Swift is dedicated to the love of Swift’s career—the satirization of politics. All of Swift’s poems are written in iambic tetrameter and end rhyme, creating a fun and quick reading experience. This is a large collection of poetry covers a wide variety of topics with the humor and satire that Jonathan Swift was famous for. With these attributes, readers are welcome to enjoy Jonathan Swift’s mysterious and passionate relationships as well as his humorous and intelligent criticism of politics. Now presented in an easy-to-read font and with an eye-catching cover design, this edition of The Poems of Jonathan Swift is perfect for a contemporary audience. With the decadent style of classic poetry combined with topics that are both entertaining and relatable, along with this edition’s new features, this classic collection is restored for modern readers.

Individually the seventeen essays in this volume reflect the particularity of Swift's verse, while together they suggest the patterns of his thought and attest to his artistic achievement. Written by some of the most noted scholars of Swift, these essays are responses to specific challenges in the poet's work, and represent our current understanding of Swift's canon and its relation to the forms of Augustan poetry.

In early June 1943, James Eric Swift, a pilot with the 83rd Squadron of the Royal Air Force, boarded his Lancaster bomber for a night raid on Münster and disappeared. Widespread aerial bombardment was to the Second World War what the trenches were to the First: a shocking and new form of warfare, wretched and unexpected, and carried out at a terrible scale of loss. Just as the trenches produced the most remarkable poetry of the First World War, so too did the bombing campaigns foster a haunting set of poems during the Second. In researching the life of his grandfather, Daniel Swift became engrossed with the connections between air war and poetry. Ostensibly a narrative of the author's search for his lost grandfather through military and civilian archives and in interviews conducted in the Netherlands, Germany, and England, Bomber County is also an examination of the relationship between the bombing campaigns of World War II and poetry, an investigation into the experience of bombing and being bombed, and a powerful reckoning with the morals and literature of a vanished moment.

Swift's poetry has a relationship either by interconnections with, or by reactions against, the poetry of his contemporaries and predecessors. He was probably influenced, in particular, by the Restoration writers John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester and Samuel Butler (who shared Swift's penchant for octosyllabic verse). He may have picked up pointers from the Renaissance poets John Donne and Sir Philip Sidney. Beside these minor borrowings of his contemporaries, his debts are almost negligible. In the Augustan Age, an era which did not necessarily value originality above other virtues, his poetic contribution was strikingly original. In reading Swift's poems, one is first impressed with their apparent spareness of allusion and poetic device. Anyone can tell that a particular poem is powerful or tender or vital or fierce, but literary criticism seems inadequate to explain why. A few recent critics have carefully studied his use of allusion and image, but with only partial success.