Swallow: Poems

by Miranda Field

From the microcosmic wilderness of an overgrown back yard to the cool, glassed-in exhibits in a natural history museum, Swallow swoops and darts, tangling the lines we draw between the wild and the cultivated. In her debut collection, Miranda Field explores a world composed equally of shadow and substance, filled not just with beauty but also with a kind of savage experience. But Swallow is more than a crisscrossing of boundaries. It is an imperative, a Go ahead, do as Eve did; let hunger take you wherever it will.
According to James Longenbach, these poems are "too beautifully made to idealize freedom, too much in love with vicissitude to idealize beauty. Read these poems, enter them, and be hungry forever."

Genres: Poetry

64 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Miranda Field, MFA, Vermont College; Bread Loaf Teaching Fellow; author of Swallow, Katharine Nason Bakeless Literary Publication Prize in Poetry; winner of a “Discovery”/The Nation Award and a Pushcart Prize; poems and essays appear in magazines, journals, and anthologies. Currently Adjunct Professor of Creative Writing at the The New School in New York http://www.newschool.edu/continuing-e....

Reviews

[Kasey Jueds · Rating 5 out of 5]

On Miranda Field's blog, I read that someone once introduced her at a reading by describing her poems as "a passage through thorns." Which is exactly, beautifully, my experience of her work. I'd read this book when it first came out, then reread it just recently after taking a workshop with her. The poems are dense, musical, sensual, strange, perfectly themselves. And I read Swallow in a way I don't usually read poetry books. My typical method is maybe to dip into one or two, but then to read the entire book in order, sometimes in one sitting. Swallow I read intensely, but in fits and starts. One poem, maybe from the middle of the book, then the same poem again (and sometimes that same poem again and again). Then perhaps the poem following, or the first poem in the book: whichever one called to me next. Often, as I said, the same poem over and over and over. The gorgeous density of the poems--their thicket-like nature--seem to invite this. And once I'd worked my way (though the work was pure pleasure) into the thicket of a particular poem, it had worked its way into me, too, and I carried it around with me for hours, days.

[Jeremy · Rating 2 out of 5]

There comes a time in the life of every poem where it must make a choice: anchor its feet in the ground of the real, or drift off into the ether of abstraction. These poems always choose the latter, and the result is a reading experience that is less desirable than it should be given the skill and intellect the poet often displays throughout this collection.

[Angela · Rating 3 out of 5]

Miranda Field is a good poet...but not the type of poet that I like. While I didn't enjoy any of the poems in this collection, I didn't not like them either. Many of her poems give impressive descriptions of small moments captured in time—whether it's a tableau at a natural history museum, one of Leonardo's anatomical sketches, a child playing with water, or a crime scene photo by Luc Sante. Her poetry is dense and has surprising diction. I often found her poems difficult to navigate, however, the titles give SO MUCH context...I spent lots of time being a little bit embarrassed by making such a rookie mistake and then, after mentally kicking myself, re-reading (e.g. "The Lost Head" describes the broken head of a garden statue). There are quite a few prose poems in this collection.

Parts of her poems are breathtakingly wonderful. However, I was often bored and felt like the little pay-off isn't worth the effort.

"...that potter's field wherein the apple holds the worm/like a safe thought carved in kindling, the worm a lighted candle." (24, "Phrenological")

"A wild thing held in the arms or in the hands acts like a dying thing. It doesn't need to listen, knows without persuasion to be still—not like a belief in ghosts or gods, but like a faith in air. And aair escapes it. It breathes as if its lungs had been replaced by gills . . . Or if instead of fears its veins were filled with gratitude." (9, "Field Hare")

"And the mayflies swarm/round your sweet salted skin/the fruit of your cheeks like lanterns" (41, "Boy Pouring Water").

Poems that I liked:
0/36 (0%) poems that I liked.

[Qonita · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's just okay i guess? It's like Anjing Gunung. Lots of pretty descriptions but none resonates with me.

[Paula · Rating 5 out of 5]

I trust Carol Muske-Dukes' opinion, and I also know that Breadloaf writers are some of the best in the United States. So I wasn't in the least surprised to find that I truly enjoyed Field's first collection of poems, Swallow.

This collection is divided into three sections. Overall, however, there is in a large part a sibilant cadence throughout the book which, for me, is incredible because it's often subtle and, interestingly, contrasts with the personal subject matter. I think my favorite poem is "Subway," but some of Field's most poignant lines are much later in the book, such as those that conclude "Boy Pouring Water":


But the weather will turn, the nonstop turning
of the seasons turn you to nothing.


WOW. Such power in so few words. Which is odd, since her poems tend to be on the long-ish side (although certainly coming nowhere near Derek Walcott-lengthed pieces).

Another attractive feature of these poems is that their meanings seem just beyond the grasp of the reader; I, for example, could intuit what the underlying subject matter really was about, but I fully accepted the moments when I had no clear, visual idea of what was supposed to be going on on the surface of the poem. There's just so much depth to Field's work that I can't wait to find out more about her and see if she's published anything else yet.

[Kent · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm especially fond of the first section of the book. The form Field uses is especially adept at drawing a tension. And with the first section, concerned mainly with a potential, it feels most effective to me. A poem like "Subway" seems a good example, as the obscure style gives way to the image of a man getting himself off on the subway platform. I like saying this touches on the theme of potential.

[Olivia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Miranda Field's poems are nothing if not sensual. The book covers everything from a medititation on an etching to witnessing a boy masturbate in a subway terminal, and yet it maintains a cohesive feel. If you ever have the chance to hear Field read her poems, go. You will be transfixed.

[Victoria · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wanna have a baby so I can write scary/sexy poems about berries and wolves and children getting lost and spiders and oysters. Mmmm intensely feminine and she's sooo pretty!

[Kristin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book of poetry took longer than any other I've ever read, and I'm not sure why. Each piece is dense and brilliant. I loved every moment.