On Walking On

by Cole Swensen

On Walking On looks outward onto--or rather, walks through--the work of various writers for whom walking was or is an important element of daily life. The number of writers who were or are serious walkers is striking, and the connection goes back to antiquity, more recently including Woolf, Nerval, Sand, Debord, Sebald, and many others.

Genres: Poetry

128 pages, Paperback

First published April 4, 2017

About the author

Cole Swensen (b. 1955— ) in Kentfield near San Francisco, Swensen was awarded a 2006 Guggenheim Fellowship and is the author of over ten poetry collections and as many translations of works from the French. A translator, editor, copywriter, and teacher, she received her B.A. and M.A. from San Francisco State University and a Ph. D. in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz before going on to become the now-Previous Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Denver. Her work is considered Postmodern and post-Language school, though she maintains close ties with many of the original authors from that group (such as Lyn Hejinian, Carla Harryman, Barrett Watten, Charles Bernstein,) as well as poets from all over the US and Europe. In fact, her work is hybrid in nature, sometimes called lyric-Language poetry emerging from a strong background in the poetic and visual art traditions of both the USA and France and adding to them her own vision.

Reviews

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The prose poem "Schelle" (p. 65)

Karl Gottlob Schelle didn't leave it to chance. In his Dei Spaziergange he details
the precise conditions for a successful stroll: when in public, the path must be neither

narrow nor broad and the public itself neither numerous nor sparse, for -- for him
too -- it all boils down to a matter of faces -- if there are too few, you find yourself

reading every one; if there are too many, you're overwhelmed. And the third rule:
you must alternate between the rural and the urban, giving equal concern to reverie

and reason, equal hesitation to the imbalance inherent in the inner for as Walter
Benjamin, later and elsewhere, similarly discovered, there are three natural laws

that govern the flaneur: the city, the crowd, and capitalism, constantly against the grain,
he too locates the face as a problematic intersection: any crowd is by definition made

of strangers looking always away, which is what estranges the face into the etranger, as
opposed to the flaneur who, in an oppositional gesture, looked directly at each one,

le devisageait, against the light, an entire crowd in silhouette into which Baudelaire
and so many others strolled, or seemed to stroll, so remarkably calm in the face of it all.

[Haley · Rating 2 out of 5]

When I read Cole Swensen, I expect _The Glass Age_ which I loved. This is not that. Yes, she is looking deeply at a moment of thought for each of these writers. And that is lovely and interesting. However, the moments between—as she steps into her own life—felt so distant. Which in itself is an interesting concept: how much clearer we feel in reflecting on another’s life than our own. But in the work she’s done here, it doesn’t go quite that far. Also, it occurs rather classist. The walkers all have the privilege to walk, the time and money (even in their sanatoriums) to breathe and reflect in this way. And the authors she chose explore are quite Euro centric. Which is disappointing if not a bit inappropriate for a book published in 2017.

[Quoth the Robyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

"am by heart becoming / all the plants on earth"

Cole Swensen's On Walking On wants to collapse the difference between walking and being in/of the mind. Swensen integrates philosophical understandings on the practice on walking into the portrait of walking itself. However, I felt and saw these wants Swensen created, but I also saw them not being fulfilled. As a lover of philosophy and theory, I was excited to see how the musings of Chaucer and Wordsworth would open the floor for poetry. Instead, I found myself noticing how far away the inspiration was from its art. Additionally, with so many philosophical voices Swensen invited into the room, it was hard extricate the emotional gravitas of each person's perspective.

"Intent on what we want. We wanted."

[S P · Rating 5 out of 5]

'What is striking in Sebald is the way in which he used walking—
or writing about walking—to release himself from the practice of time.

"The sentence is," he says, "a funeral cortege" and wanders off.
In the sleep of Lebanese cedars, in the sleep of a vapor trail just

over the trees, dream the incandescent glass houses of Somerleyton
lit by gas—huge conservatories built of orchids with panes so thin they

explode in the sun, and every fragment of every one glints, hundreds of
thousands, creating as many tiny blind-spots across a blinding afternoon.'

(from 'Seabed: The Rings of Saturn', p82)

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

i loved this book, an engagement with various writers on the subject of walking.

[Kathryn · Rating 2 out of 5]

These poems tried too hard to be inventive and missed the mark. With the exception of a few gems, the collection's overall syntax, mixing of tenses, random placement of subjects, and lack of lyricism is off-putting and disappointing. Nothing has more potential for poignant, fresh imagery than a book on the symbolism and experience of walking, but the mixture of syntax and diction cut off power to vivify. The unnecessarily disjointed sentence structure only caused confusion and missed the opportunity for rich interpretation; in its place was a strange preoccupation with a kind of minimalism that bordered on distortion.